To save you all a lot of reading, I will give you the answer right here - the most cost effective electricity for your city is Tesla Power Plants! By a lot!!!!!
But if you want to see the calculations, this post will go through the math and strategies. All of these buildings can be found in this section of the wiki https://www.airportcitygame.com/wiki/industries/
At the early stages of the game, you will buy energy with coins because that's what you have. The options are Power Plant, Wind Turbine, Solar Panel and Coal Station. You can find information on these buildings here https://www.airportcitygame.com/wiki/industries/
| Building | Price | Energy added | Space Needed | Energy Produced per Square | Cost per Unit of Energy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Power Plant | 100 coins | 6 | 1x1 | 6 | 16.67 coins |
| Wind Turbine | 800 coins | 10 | 1x1 | 10 | 80 coins |
| Solar Panel | 4000 coins | 14 | 1x1 | 14 | 285.7 coins |
| Coal Station | 8000 coins | 60 | 2x2 | 15 | 133.34 coins |
When you look at this table, the decision seems easy. Power Plants produce the cheapest energy so load up on those.
No.
Your city will need a lot of electricity to power buildings, building upgrades and even runway extensions. So when you are calculating the efficiency of electricity, you should think about the cost of land rather than the cost of the buildings in coins. You will get to a point in the game where you have no more need for coins and only green cash will matter. After the 20th land expansion, every expansion can only be purchased with greenies.
So in the above table, the most efficient electricity based on the cost of land would be the coal station if you have a 2x2 space and solar panels if it's harder to find the space and can only fit 1x1 buildings. You might start with a power plant, but as you have more coins, replace the power plants with solar panels.
A high end city could use as much as 8000 units of electricity - maybe more if you want to be creative with your city design, or less if you want to be more energy efficient. If you used only coal stations, you would need 34 city squares to generate 8000 electricity. And there is actually a point in the game when you energy consumption will likely go down - when you have all the coins you need and you remove coin producers in favor of adventure buildings that mostly use no electricity.
And given the cost of land (90 greenies on sale for later land expansions), you will want to ultimately replace any of the above electricity generating buildings with more efficient electricity producers preventing the requirement to buy more land. If you get up to 6-7 city squares with electricity buildings purchased with coins, it's time to start thinking about replacing the coal stations with more efficient buildings that are less expensive than additional land. For one land expansion on sale (90 greens), you can purchase 3 tesla power plants on sale and still have 18 greenies left over.
So let's do some space based calculations on the assumption of the cost of land at 90 greenies per city square. Although each of these scenarios are calculated based on 1200 units of electricity, you will ultimately require much more than than.
Tesla Power Plant
- 1 city square @ 90 greenies = 90
- 4 teslas on sale for 24 greenies each = 96
- total 186 greenies
Solar Power Station
- just over 1 1/2 city squares = 140.625
- 25 solar power stations @ 9 greenies each = 225
- total 365.63
Windmill
- almost 2 city squares = 168.75 greenies
- 30 windmills @ 8 greenies each = 240greenies
- total 408.75 greenies
By comparison to the most efficient electricity purchased with coins
Coal Station
- building cost only coins
- 5 city squares @ 90 greenies = 450
- total 450 greenies
Besides the Electrical Substation that every player gets through game play at 75 days, there are two other electricity producing buildings that can be acquired through collections - one through regular game play and one from an event.
Airforce - from Celestial Festival Event. Cost - nothing. Produces 100 electricity
- building has no cost
- 3 city squares at 90 greens = 270
- total 270 greenies
Nuclear Power Plant - from regular game play. Thunderbird flights to Tehran.
This is a bit tougher to work into the grid above because they require 3x3 land to fit.
- building cost N/A
- land cost for 4 1/2 squares at 90 greens = 405
So, bringing it all together based on the cost of 1200 electricity ...
| Building | Cost of Buildings | Cost of Land | Total Cost in Greenies | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | Tesla Power Plant | 96 greens (when on sale) | 90 greens | 186 greens |
| 2nd | Airforce | N/A | 270 greens | 270 greens |
| 3rd | Solar Power Station | 225 greens | 141 greens | 366 greens |
| 4th | Nuclear Power Plant | N/A | 405 greens | 405 greens |
| 5th | Windmill | 240 greens | 169 greens | 409 greens |
| 6th | Coal Station | 160,000 coins | 450 greens | 450 greens |
The results are in. Buy Tesla Power Plants as soon as you can afford them. They are by far the most efficient in terms of cost.
Attachments
Last edited:
Nayeon
