One of the trickier things to get running efficiently in Dyson Sphere Program is power management. It doesn’t help that the game takes it relatively easy on you in the beginning, with wind turbines more than meeting energy demand for the most basic buildings. Even powering your mech is easy in the beginning as you can just bundle in coal to keep it running until you engineer ways to easily get better resources.
Soon though you may run into some issues: buildings working slower than originally intended, resources not appearing, running out of energy on your mech whilst floating on a gas giant, that sort of thing. Chances are that if there’s nothing wrong with the production line, the problem is that you don’t have enough power available to keep everything running smoothly.
So to keep your base running as smoothly as is possible, you need to learn all about how each resource generates energy, how to transfer power between planets, and which of the many energy resources are the most efficient.
Managing power on every planet is a tricky business. There are many factors to consider, such as how much coal or oil there is on the planet, or the wind and solar energy ratios. When you’ve unlocked the ability to look at the starmap, press V to get a view of the nearest planets. By zooming out, then clicking on the planet you wish to view the details of, you can see the potential energy that planet can produce.
When you begin the game, the only power sources available to you are the wind turbines. They’re good enough for the beginning of the game, but pretty soon you’ll want to upgrade to better power sources. If the planet has a high wind energy ratio, then you’ll get more power generated per wind turbine, but keep in mind that you need a huge wind farm to generate enough electricity to run a big operation. Solar panels are much the same story, in that you need a lot of panels and a decent solar energy ratio to get the most out of them.
Here are all of the Dyson Sphere Program power plant types and how much power they generate:
Speaking of things to do in the long run, it is possible to generate electricity on one planet, ship the captured energy via accumulators, then use an extractor to inject another planet’s power supply with those full accumulators. Since power is not shared between planets, this is a vital step to fully automating your operation. Here are the tech tree requirements:
A key thing to note is that you must be generating surplus power to your base in order to charge the accumulators needed to transport energy over. To transfer energy from one planet to another, you will need to follow these exact steps:
Different power sources generate varying rates of electricity when placed in a relevant power station or generator. Some generate a miniscule amount of energy that will be burned through in seconds, while others generate enough to keep a base going for a long time. Each resource has an associated energy generation value in joules. For the unfamiliar, the value of a joule is measured much like hard drive space on a computer, so a one gigajoule power source lasts much longer than 500 kilojoules.
And that’s all you need to know about power in Dyson Sphere Program. As long as you keep building on your power sources, you’ll be able to run your base effectively, and will be able to power your operations no matter which planet you end up on. If you’re looking for tips on logistics, our Dyson Sphere Program guide has an entire section dedicated to moving goods around. We also have a guide to help you look for Dyson Sphere Program titanium, the principles of which can be applied to other rare resources on other planets.
