Yeah, there's substations and Hybrid Energy, but by and large there are no power plant POIs?
It's a good observation. I would even suggest a destroyed nuclear plant better explains the wasteland than lingering fallout from a nuclear detonation. I've got solar and wind power plant POIs in my modlet. If the game is set in 2034 then they'd be even more common and of greater capacity than today.
Which form of energy would you pick?
The classic plants (coal, natural gas, nuclear) would be a large POI.
As of 2024, Arizona:
- Natural Gas: 47.5% - Latest plant to open (or convert from coal) was 2019.
- Nuclear: 27.9% - All from one power plant.
- Solar: 9.28% - Latest to open was 2025.
- Coal: 8.45% - All 4 of their coal plants are scheduled to close by 2032.)
- Hydroelectric: 4.56% - Latest plant to open was 2003; before that 1981.
- Wind: 1% - Latest to open was 2024.
- Biomass: 0.19%
The state generates excess power and about 20% of the power they generate they export to other states.
Battery stations have been opening. I want to say these displace the Gas Peaker plants eventually. That is, a plant that fires up quickly to satisfy faster changes in demand that the classic large plants cannot handle efficiently.
They appear to have one solar thermal plant (as opposed to photovoltaic). Those are pretty large and involve a bunch of mirrors used to heat something up. In this case, it looks like they have large salt tanks. I'm not sure how well these kinds of plants are doing; I had read of problems with them in the past. These are pretty big places. There's would be 1500 x 1500 blocks --10x the max size of a POI -- but you could do a scaled approximation.
So, it wouldn't surprise me if Coal was effectively gone (or one plant remaining) by 2034. It's anyone's bet as to what happens with Natural Gas. I tend to think it will be in decline, but energy demands are growing fast right now and I think out pacing the growth of renewables. I could see where the game world might want to assume a growth in nuclear power, perhaps via the use of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) that people are talking about today. In fact, pictures of SMRs look quite viable as a POI, but perhaps an underwhelming encounter.
