Power conduit

See also: Waterproof conduit

Power conduit

A bundle of electrical cables for moving power around. Can be placed under walls and other buildings.

Base Stats

Type

Building – Power

Market Value

2  ^[Note]

Beauty

-2

HP

80

Flammability

70%

Building

Size

1 × 1

Minifiable

False

Placeable

True

Passability

standable

Edifice

false

Terrain Affordance

Light

Creation

Required Research

Electricity

Work To Make

35 ticks (0.58 secs)

Resources to make

1

Deconstruct yield

nothing

Destroy yield

nothing

A power conduit transmits power from generators or batteries to appliances up to six squares away. Conduit doesn't block the placement of other structures and isn't blocked by them, so conduit can be placed wherever it's needed, even in walls, except unsmoothed mountain rocks and ores.

Note that, unlike most other construction, when deconstructed, power conduit has 0% chance to produce any valuable material.

Acquisition

Power conduits can be constructed once the Electricity research project has been completed. They require  1 Steel and 35 ticks (0.58 secs) of work.

Summary

Power conduits transport power. There must be a direct connection to a conduit, power switch, battery, or other power transmiting device for a conduit to be able to transport power. However, electric appliances, such as an electric stove, can link up to a conduit, battery, or generator up to 6 tiles away. Anything with the "Reconnect" gizmo can attach to a distant conduit, but conduits can't attach to a distant conduit.

Conduits can be placed under walls and doors, which hides their -2 beauty penalty. In addition, raiders must break the wall before the conduit can be attacked, which usually makes the conduit a very low priority target.

Short circuit

A conduit can short circuit, damaging a random piece of conduit and discharging all connected stored power from batteries, in an explosion proportional to the amount of charge. This damage can be mitigated by building walls over your power conduits (reducing the spread of fires), keeping critical areas and storage away from conduits, and disconnecting charged banks of batteries from the network via a power switch.

Conduits do not short circuit in the rain, though other appliances can.

Analysis

Batteries connect directly to the wind turbine and the attached coolers, with no conduits. This power grid will only "Zzztt" if the batteries get rained on.

Conduits in some form are practically required to use electricity, however using power conduits specifically opens the risk of random short circuits.

It is possible to connect appliances directly to a generator or battery to avoid using any conduits, but hidden conduits are a more practical method of avoiding short circuits at large scales. They are fireproof, cannot be attacked by raiders, do not have a beauty penalty, and immune to the short-circuit event, all at the cost of 1 extra steel per conduit. If you can afford the tiny cost, hidden conduits should be used instead of power conduits.

A base that uses no power conduits is immune to random short circuit events.

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Architect

Power

Power conduit (Hidden, Waterproof) • Power switch • Wood-fired generator • Chemfuel powered generator • Wind turbine

(research)

Battery • Geothermal generator • Solar generator • Watermill generator • Toxifier generator • Bioferrite generator

(uncraftable)

Vanometric power cell • Unstable power cell

Related

Ship reactor • Electroharvester