W3C - Maintenance of Wind Farms

We have discussed this before on the forum.
There are countries with more wind farms than they can manage and they seem to be unable or unwilling to purchase the wind turbines that are needed for maintenance. They can of course set up more wind turbine corporations but are not doing so.

Wind farms cannot continue to produce if there is no maintenance.

We have announced and specified the way this will be taken care of but also delayed the introduction of this function to allow players to make sure they have no shortages and to set up new WT corporations.

We will introduce this function before the end of June.

The way it works is to make the output of a wind farm depend on the shortage of wind turbines in the country.

A country with a small shortage, will see a small decline in the amount of EP produced each game month.

the amount that is produced will decline by a much larger margin if the country has a large shortage.

A shortage of 1000 wind turbines means that 1000 wind farms were not maintained.

If shortages become very very large than some wind farms will be closed each game month.

we are still working on the details of the function and will publish the exact numbers before it is introduced into the game.

Please purchase the wind turbines you need for maintenance and if needed, set up corporations to produce these WT in your own countries.

Thanks for the information in this update!

"They can of course set up more wind turbine corporations but are not doing so. "

Wind turbine corps are being built by many players, this isn't a quick process to rework entire economies, due to countries requiring 100% staffing to open a corp it can take days to close less profitable (albeit still in drastic shortage) corps, re-balance the unemployed workers, and replace with wind turbine corps.

The implementation of wind farms has been a mess, and mixed with other changes many of which unannounced / vaguely announced have turned this game into micromanagement hell, requiring constant attention, AFK for a couple days your empire is in shambles.

Agree with Jiggle. Add to that wind turbine corps require a considerable investment of ht exe workers, many more than other level 3 corps. You can't just close one and open a wt Corp because of the imbalance in workers.
Most of my countries have the WT they need now but it's been because of constant manual orders at the max offer price, which continues to be required in some countries. It's a huge micromanaging requirement that isn't sustainable long term.

We have delayed the maintenance issue to give players the time to increase the production of wind turbines.

Many did and the numbers are growing.

this feature will be implemented, probably next week and will start with small numbers.
It will gradually become more forceful while more wind turbines are hopefully being built.

At the end, the maintenance issue must be taken into account.
It was announced a long time ago.

we will publish the details coming Monday or Tuesday.

Does that means that a lower efficiency WF will consume less wind turbines? That entire mechanism should lower shortages in Market and per country after all.

I have a negative turbine balance simply because I was going bankrupt buying them and having to borrowing about a trillion a year to do so. I’m sure it’s operator error, but I agree with everyone else on it being a mess.

More corporations producing wind turbines, and contracting them to the own country, will resolve the shortages of these turbines.
Some already have done so.
If numbers are negative, you either do not produce enough of them, or you have too many wind farms.
A country can only support a number of wind farms, depending on the size of the population and the number of wind turbines it can produce.

if you have this problem, make sure your windfarm corporations do not contract to the country but rather sell their products on the market to increase your revenue and profits.

The shortages of wind turbines on the markets now are such that you cannot rely on deliveries from the market but rather produce them yourself.

Wind energy remains very profitable for the country.
it can produce revenue and profit to the country if not overdone.

we believe that profits will continue longer term but now as a major contributor to the country profits.

Please confirm if my understanding is correct.

1) Wind Farm quality does not affect the amount or quality of Electric Power generated.
2) Wind Turbines quality (in maintenance cost) does not affect anything at all.

If I am right and you sell to your country, it has no point at all to quality upgrade any of those corporations or buy high quality supplies.
Right?

1. Correct. Regardless of the WF quality, the EP quality will be set (it is currently being gradually stepped down to 120Q at random stages by Andy). So higher quality WF just means paying more for no actual benefit.

2. Wind Turbine quality impacts only the maintenance cost. The quality of them is completely inconsequential as far as the mechanics of the maintenance - 1 WT consumed for 1 WF operation per turn. So similar to WFs, higher quality WTs just means paying more for no actual benefit. When creating a WT corp for the purpose of self-supply, that does imply that buying input supplies for the corp at anything higher than minimum quality is in fact a loss of money.

You are correct.

And those that opened turbine corps based on the original plan where electric quality would follow farm / turbine quality built a bunch of corps that will soon need to be closed as wind will not be profitable with high quality turbines, currently around 220Q turbines is break even.

Note: the max price of electricity went down a few months ago.

Wind energy and wind farms will remain very profitable, as long as there are shortages of EP.

we have seen some fluctuations in EP price and short term surplus but it seems to return to shortages everywhere.

longer term, I have made some suggestions to restructure the energy market while preserving the profitability of wind energy. It will be done.

We do not think, and said it several times, that wind farms in very large numbers will be sustainable because of the need for many wind turbines for maintenance and the need to produce them within the own country.

it will then result in an economy that is dependent, for a large part, on EP.

Just for confirmation, you have no plans to reduce the space a WT takes up on a shuttle and have no plans to make production/supply contracts exempt from spending space? So in essence a player owned enterprise can reasonably supplement an empire owned by the same player on the same world with virtually every non-structure and non-naval item there is except for WTs and there is no plan to change that. Please let me know because things like this absolutely matter in long term planning, there have been a lot of drastic and sudden turns with these updates for a game designed to be a marathon more than a sprint.

Can we have you add a "Sell" option to the Trade feature to sell Wind Farms, please? I am not a fan of this at the moment and am over it- ready to sell and let you work out the glitches.

I do sort of understand why they can be demolished but can't be sold after purchased. I visualize them in the same light as hospitals, schools, etc where they're essentially large fixed settings tied into the power grid once all the turbines are installed and become a farm. The ability to close them has been implemented as a tab in the 'Energy Report' page.

Ah yes- I see that now. Thank you. I'm sure this will be a great addition to the game once ironed out.