Energy management

Energy management is an optional feature that can be enabled in the world setting before creating the world or in the settings after world creation. The player can choose from three settings: Disable, Buildings only or Buildings + vehicles

Energy management includes planning and operation of energy production and energy consumption units as well as energy distribution. In Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic there are actually two ways of transporting energy, by electricity or by fuel. Electricity is being used by buildings, while fuel is being used by vehicles. The player has to take care of providing energy to buildings and vehicles, by constructing the appropriate buildings.

Disable

When the player starts a game with the energy management setting set to 'Disabled', the player does not have to take care of supplying electricity and fuel. Buildings retrieve automatically electricity and vehicles keep running.

Buildings only

With the energy management setting set to 'Buildings only', the player has to provide electricity to the republic. The player can import electricity from a foreign power connection or can generated electricity at power plants. There are different kind of power plants in the game each with their advantages and disadvantages. Apart from generating electricity, the player also has to take care of delivering electricity to buildings. A wide variety of voltage wires, power switches and transformers are available in-game.

When the lights start flickering in buildings or there is a power failure, the citizens happiness and health are affected. The player has to give attention to the power grid to keep the citizens satisfied.

With this energy management game setting the player doesn't have to take care of vehicles. Vehicles keep running the same as with the 'Disabled' energy management setting.

Buildings + vehicles

With this energy management setting the player has to provide electricity to buildings, exactly the same as the setting 'Buildings only'. Apart from that, vehicles will need to be supplied with either fuel or electricity, depending on the vehicle type.

Vehicles running on fuel

Fuel

All new fuel consuming vehicles have 20% fuel in their tank when the appear in the world independent of whether they are purchased from outside the republic or produced within. A road vehicle can drive for 19 game days with a full tank of fuel before it runs out. Therefore, the distance a road vehicle travels before needing to refuel is determined by the speed at which it travels.

Refueling

Refueling can happen either at the workplace of the vehicle or at refueling stations.

There are gas stations for road vehicles, train diesel station for trains, any harbour for ships, and any appropriate terminal for aircrafts. Vehicles assigned to a workplace will only refuel there. Examples of vehicles assigned to a workplace are rail and road vehicles assigned to distribution offices and road vehicles assigned to farms, technical offices, hospitals, and fire stations. Helicopters at hospitals and fire stations with helipads will refuel at their workplace. All structures used for fueling require electricity.

The size of the fuel tank is determined by the "Engine power" of the vehicle with a conversion factor of 5.2 l/kW. As an example, the Chav 11M3 bus has an engine power of 118 kW, which means that it has a fuel tank size of 613.6 l.

Note that fuel consumption mechanics are different depending on vehicle type. For instance trains use more fuel while accelerating while road vehicles do not.

Once the fuel tank gets below 20% full it will start checking for nearby gas stations, where it will aim to pick a gas station connected to the route close to the 16.6% full mark. The vehicle will chose to fuel at the nearest gas station when given the option to fuel at a gas station it reaches at just below 20% or a station it would reach near 1-2%. The vehicle will also accept detours to reach a gas station, where the acceptable length of the detour depends on how full the tank is.

If a vehicle that cannot reach a gas station before it is depleted it will either runout, stop and block the route or continue driving to the nearest gas station within range. The distance at which a gas station is considered within range depends on its speed.

It is recommended to build gas stations next to your bus stations and construction offices to minimize the vehicles' travel time to them.

Fuel can be imported from a custom house and delivered at a gas station. It's also possible for the player to refine fuel by placing pumpjacks, pump oil to an oil refinery and the oil refinery delivers fuel and bitumen. The fuel can be stored in oil tanks and distributed through the republic by oil tanks via road and rails.

Fuel efficiency

The fuel consumption of a road vehicle on a given route can be estimated as [math]\displaystyle{ \approx 57.09 \left ( \frac{m}{l} \right ) \cdot \left ( \frac{Average\ speed}{Engine\ power} \cdot \frac{kW}{ \left ( \frac{km}{h} \right )} \right ) }[/math]

Fuel consumption for fuel based vehicles does not seem to change with acceleration and remains constant as long as the vehicle is in motion.

While one can try to exploit refueling mechanic of the AI to effectively use imaginary fuel, this can be risky as traffic and snow can lower the average speed resulting in vehicles running out while out of range of a gas station. Farming vehicles however regularly run out of fuel, where they will complete sowing or harvesting the field they are working on and then drive back to the farm to refuel.

Electrified vehicles

Also electrified vehicles are enabled with this game setting. Trolleybuses are vehicles that run on electricity. They can only drive on electrified trolleybus road, which is powered through a trolleybus trafo.

Power consumption of trolleybuses depend of their engine power and whether they are accelerating. At constant speed they consume 7.33% of their engine power in electricity. For instance the Skd 14T would at constant speed consume 7.33% of 100 kW, i.e. 7.33 kW. During acceleration they consume up to a peak of 50% of their engine power, which for the Skd 14T would be 50 kW. This increased power draw does decrease quickly though.