Purchased power not connecting with city

Hi @jawmusic27 - For the power sharing: Power available will fluctuate depending on time of day, and if your supplying city ever has interruptions in service (not enough workers/roads not connected/etc), that interruption will affect the receiving city as well. Important to note that when sharing utilities, the available power is split among the number of claimed connected cities in the region. So, if your supplying city has 2000 mw available and you only have one other claimed connected city, then 2000 mw will be available to City2. But, if you claim another connected city, the available power to each of them immediately drops to 1000 mw each. It also can take a bit to synchronize time between the two cities.

Were you losing power in (receiving) City2 while playing it, or were you seeing this from the (supplying) City1 regional view?

When you purchase power from another city, it can take a bit for the game to synchronize the power usage. The regional view from the supplying City1 will sometimes show a "needs power" message for the receiving City2 even if you're selling it. If, when you go into City2, it is receiving power then it is all good. The cities don't advance in time while you're not playing them, so it's more than likely a synchronization thing. If both cities are running fine when you go in to manage them, then just proceed from there. You will not have the city go abandoned due to lack of power if you're not playing it.

That being said, regional synchronization can be confusing sometimes. If City1 is a couple of years ahead of the others, and sometime in the past had a glitch with the power (say, traffic got bad and the power plant didn't have any workers for a small time) you may forget about that and then later, while running City2, it suddenly loses power for no apparent reason - it could be catching up in time to that one glitch. At this point, you have plenty of power for the needs on your other city, just be aware that with any service sharing you want to be mindful of how much the other cities will need further down the line.

About the solar farm: Solar energy only replenishes during the daylight hours (6 am to 6 pm). Overnight, it is running on battery power, which only replenishes if you have surplus during the day. You may show that you have 200 mw surplus at noon, but that is probably not enough to run your entire city overnight. This is why you're losing power intermittently. 

For both cases, you need to monitor the supply and usage over the course of a few days, and try to balance your building with the power availability. I would suggest monitoring how much available power you have in the first city for a few in-game days, see if there's a time of day where it drops significantly. Once you know you have a significant amount of power available, go into City2, turn off the solar farm and buy the power from City1 again. Then monitor and see how much power it draws. You need to give it some time to catch up to the first city. If you keep the solar farm on, make sure the setting to share power is turned off. That way, it will only draw power from City1 when it needs it. Be aware it will not be immediate - it does take a bit for the yellow power to flow from one city to another.

I hope this helps. If you're still having issues, please share some screenshots of your power data maps. I may be able to give you more specifics.

Happy Building!

Thanks for the notes. I'll check and see about the solar thing when I get a chance tonight. That may explain the outages.

As for purchasing power from my other city, I only have two, so the fill excess should be available. I also haven't had outages in my main city since well before I started City 2, so that shouldn't be the issue. I know it can take some time to sync that, but it doesn't ever work. I've let it sit until my entire city2 burns down (hours in real time) and it never connects. I've also switched to my main city and let it run for an hour or two and it never connects from that end either. It always says "buying 0 of 2000MW" or whatever the actual number is (somewhere in the 1900's actually). If I switch to regional view it'll show the arrow indicating I'm sending power to the other city, but it'll never actually connect. I don't think it's a time delay thing, I think it's just not connecting to city2.

Incidentally, if I purchase power from city1, that should cover me when city 2 runs out over night (assuming that's the issue) and keep the blackouts from happening, correct? It'll purchase when the supply drops and then stop once the supply picks up again the next day? So rather than shut down my solar plant I can just leave it on and see if the blackouts stop and that should tell me if it's actually connecting? Just looking for a way to keep from having my whole city burn down while I wait to see if it actually connects.

I'll post some screenshots tonight.

JAW

Yes, City 2 will use whatever power it has available in the city first, and then connect / buy from City 1 when needed. It's been my experience, though, that you will always have an in-game hour or more waiting for the power to flow from one city to another. That's why I suggested turning off the solar to see if it works. Another consideration is where the two cities are in time - what year / month are each of the cities in? 

You may want to zoom in to make sure all your roads are actually connected - sometimes in building and bulldozing, you can accidentally take out a small snippet of a road. If that happened right inside the entrance, it's possible the power can't get to the rest of the city.

Since you're playing offline / single player, you could do a "save as" and test a few things out first to see how long it takes to synch up various ways. Then go back to your main save to implement the solution that works.

My roads are definitely all connected, so that's no the issue. I'm including 3 screenshots. The first one is after letting the city run for a full day, showing I've got power surplus but still have portions of my city without power at 4:39pm game time, so after 9+ hours of daylight. There's no (reasonable) rationale for it to take that long for power to get throughout my whole city.

This next one is after I've shut down my solar plant and let it sit for over 24 hours of game time. You can see there's still no power reaching my city from my main city (and the main entrance road is clearly connected). I've let this sit similarly for 3-4 days of game time and nothing changes. For what it's worth, I have no idea why it says I have a surplus. I have no other power source in my city, and clearly power isn't reaching there from anywhere else, so that also seems to be glitchy.

This third screenshot is the view of the region showing that I should be receiving power, and that I'm using 0 MW of the 1969 MW that are available. Meanwhile, my whole city is shutting down and burning up because no power is reaching it.

I should add that I am able to share things like police, fire, trash/recycling, and I'm able to purchase ControlNet, (although not enough to cover everything when my towers are all down).

Thoughts?

JAW

Okay, I have a theory. I saw that power surplus despite my solar plant being turned off and all my buildings without power and I thought that didn't make sense. So, I bulldozed my solar plant, and the surplus went UP(!) to 65 MW! No buildings got power, but somehow I had more without a plant than I did with one turned off. So I don't know why the heck that's happening, but my guess is that's what's causing the issue with purchasing power. Since my meter shows a surplus, it's not going to purchase any from the region. The problem is, I clearly shouldn't have a surplus when I've got a city full of buildings and no power plant.

JAW

OK - first thoughts: Do you have a megatower with a power cap on it somewhere? That might account for the extra power that you seem to have.

For the 1st screen shot, it appears that you just don't have enough power to run to the whole city. It's definitely powering some, then running out of steam for some reason. In neither of the screenshots do you show your city buying power from the other city.

Have you tried choosing "Stop" in the region view, and then start buying again? It just may not have registered for some reason.

Screenshots of the data maps, rather than just the city, would be more helpful. (click on the lightning bolt to see the data map, hover over the graphs to see the actual power used) I tested adding solar power (not enough) to a city I have that is running entirely from another city's power. Here is what I would look at:

If you're purchasing power from another city, it will ALWAYS be right on the dividing line - never more or less capacity, always at 0 (unless the city you're buying from doesn't have enough to fill the deficit)

In the region view, it appears to be a bug with the arrow. This is the same setup as above, and mine says buying zero power even though it was buying it. 

However, after running a bit it showed the actual usage. You can hover over the bars to see the numbers for each. The arrow shows all available to purchase; the graph bars show generated / consumed / deficit. The deficit should equal what you're actually buying.

Make sure you've cleared the "sell power to neighbors" checkbox on the solar farm, and try stopping and then restarting the purchase.

Please let me know how this turns out, and if it's still an issue, screenshots of the data maps like the ones I shared above could be helpful. 🤞

Thanks for your reply. There were a lot of points, so I've tried to respond to each one below.

OK - first thoughts: Do you have a megatower with a power cap on it somewhere? That might account for the extra power that you seem to have.

No, I have no megatowers in this city. No power sources at all. And if I did, and had that surplus, all my buildings should be powered, no?

For the 1st screen shot, it appears that you just don't have enough power to run to the whole city. It's definitely powering some, then running out of steam for some reason. In neither of the screenshots do you show your city buying power from the other city.

The first screenshot shows a 234MW surplus. The fact that it's not reaching my buildings is exactly the problem (one of them, anyway) I'm having. With that surplus all my buildings should be powered, at least during the day. You mentioned it could take some time if I don't have enough battery power overnight, so I included that one to show that even during the day after it's had time to recharge I still don't get power to all my buildings despite that surplus.

Have you tried choosing "Stop" in the region view, and then start buying again? It just may not have registered for some reason.

Yes, several times over the course of the last few weeks. Nothing changes, I think because my city is registering a surplus despite having no power source.

Screenshots of the data maps, rather than just the city, would be more helpful. (click on the lightning bolt to see the data map, hover over the graphs to see the actual power used) I tested adding solar power (not enough) to a city I have that is running entirely from another city's power. Here is what I would look at:

I'll grab a screenshot of that map and post it shortly in a separate reply. I also figured out how to get a wider view of my city, so it'll be a little easier to see more of it.

If you're purchasing power from another city, it will ALWAYS be right on the dividing line - never more or less capacity, always at 0 (unless the city you're buying from doesn't have enough to fill the deficit)

Yeah, I know how it *should* work. I buy some things from my other city (namely ControlNet), so I know you only get exactly what you need and will always run at net-0.

In the region view, it appears to be a bug with the arrow. This is the same setup as above, and mine says buying zero power even though it was buying it. 

However, after running a bit it showed the actual usage. You can hover over the bars to see the numbers for each. The arrow shows all available to purchase; the graph bars show generated / consumed / deficit. The deficit should equal what you're actually buying.

I know there is sometimes a delay. That's not the issue. This *NEVER* connects. Ever. It's not a delay. I've had this city running for months of game time and hours of real time with no connection.

Make sure you've cleared the "sell power to neighbors" checkbox on the solar farm, and try stopping and then restarting the purchase.

I have. And right now I don't have a power plant at all (hence my confusion about how I have a surplus).

Here is the power map. You can see there are no power sources (they'd be labeled with the the blue lightning bolt icon), yet some buildings are powered and I have 15.2MW excess. I played around with this some by shutting down other utilities, parks, buildings, etc. and eventually everything goes red (or gray), and I end up with about 130MW excess power. Again, that makes no sense because if I had excess power, my buildings should have power. I think this is the root of the power purchasing issue. For whatever reason it's showing excess power, and that's telling it not to purchase any from my other city even when I obviously need it.

I have to admit - that is weird! lol I guess it's possible that you have some corrupted data which is causing this.

Now that I can see your whole map, the power flow issue from the solar panels probably stems from only having three connections from the cliff part to the valley part. The simulation for power sends out the power agents (the yellow dots) along the road from the source. They run similar to the wonky traffic - when it reaches an intersection, it takes a random turn and if there are only a couple ways to get from one spot to another it frequently won't find its way, even with a surplus. (I'm not saying it's correct, just saying that's the way it works). You could try plopping an electric source in each area to test that theory.

I would still work towards buying power, though. I know in the screen shots you're showing it without purchasing power from anywhere, but I have never seen power come up to the entrance and stop like it shows for your city. Nor have I ever seen random buildings still powered like that, with no power source (after a couple sim-hours, anyway) Personally, I would try to demolish a part of the road and reconnect it at the entrance, just in case (I know it looks connected, can't hurt to try tho). 

To try to fix local corruption, follow these steps:

• Exit SimCity and Origin completely.
• Rename the SimCityUserData folder, or move it to your desktop as a backup. No need to worry, the game will recreate this folder when you log in again. Default location is \\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\SimCity\SimCityUserData 
• Save a copy of your Games folder to your desktop as a backup. Default location is    \\<YourWindowsUserName>\Documents\SimCity
• Launch Origin "As Administrator" (Right-click Origin.exe, choose Compatibility tab, Check the box next to "Run this program as administrator")
• In Origin, right-click the SimCity icon and choose "Repair". Origin has to be online for this to complete. Let the repair run until completed.
• Launch SimCity "As Administrator" and check to see if the problem is fixed
• If the issue still exists, exit completely out of SimCity and Origin. Navigate to \\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\SimCity\SimCityRecovery. Right-click SimCityRecovery.exe and choose "Run As Administrator". Be patient, this is a targeted reinstall and can take some time to complete.
• Reset your preferred options in the settings menu (I always disable the auto-save, so I can exit without saving and revert my game back to the original save point) 
• If you use any mods, you will want to add them back one at a time, testing after each one to make sure a mod is not causing the issue
  
  Corruption can happen if there is an interruption in the synchronization process, or if something like antivirus or firewall is preventing communication, so always run Origin.exe and SimCity.exe "as administrator". Be sure both are added to exception lists for antivirus and firewall.