Power to the People - Watt Are You Gonna Do?

Power to the People is a game about trying to keep the lights on in a city that won't stop growing, ideally without causing any explosions...
Power to the People on Steam - store.steampowered.com/app/14...
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Fanfare for Space, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
creativecommons.org/licenses/b...

[@thischannelhasnocontent8629]

"everyone has power," said Jon, while people did not have power

[@ManyATrueNerd]

Ahhh, but the people without electricity couldn't complain about it online, so problem solved.

[@mejhdhhicbfshihids652]

@@ManyATrueNerdJon phones have batteries

[@rikamayhem]

@@mejhdhhicbfshihids652 Not for long; complaints will stop once they're out of battery and the short attention span of the media will take care of preserving Jon's reputation.

[@jeffjwatts]

@@mejhdhhicbfshihids652 "Jon phones have batteries" So Jon takes the batteries out of his phone. Problem solved!

[@CZOM027]

Everyone but white's, is Jon's rhetoric.

[@extralyfe]

I fucking love Jon automatically putting all his dirty power generation buildings along the pristine coastline that people would probably want to live on. oh, cool, shoreline meeting up with a river? gas power plant goes there, obviously.

[@aparrotformrpoirot8906]

we do have a gas power plan' on coast near Brighton we wen up on hills as kids and watched he coal one was replacing be blown up no all ke's on m' key board work sorry. southwick beach is great if a lil industrial having offshore wind farm makes i look even nicer

[@morganrobinson8042]

I've seen him play Cities Skyline. This is if anything a bit better than usual.

[@KerbalRocketry]

not that uncommon, as parrot points out there's Shoreham powerstation proudly sitting right on the seafront. (also late in the tech-tree the game lets you massively reduce the nimby radius of powerplants so they basically don't matter anymore for gas plants)

[@ChaoticNeutralMatt]

@@aparrotformrpoirot8906 honestly the apology made that harder to read. Good thought tho

[@tach5884]

@@aparrotformrpoirot8906 Too late, that's your accent now.

[@samreid6010]

As an electrical engineer going into power systems, this is glorious Note: the voltage and frequency a generator produces depends on how fast it’s running, how it’s configured, etc. Most generators have throttles on them to keep them at the right frequency (with some exceptions). Depending on what voltage is produced by the generators (I’m using generator as a general term for whatever is generating the power), the line is usually passed through a transformer to kick it up to high voltage. This is because power is naturally lost over the length of the transmission lines because all material has resistance, no matter how conducive it is. Higher voltage leads to less power bleed leads to more power getting to where it needs to go. Once it gets close to where it needs to go, the voltage will be stepped down at a sub station to either it’s usually level or slightly above its usual level, depending on how the utility company works. If it isn’t stepped down all the way then there will be further transformers for either the neighborhood or block level.

[@ManyATrueNerd]

Yes. Electricity.

[@samreid6010]

@@ManyATrueNerd please, I haven’t even gotten into the nightmare that is storage discharge frequency and constant plateau.

[@halocrusher17]

@@ManyATrueNerd as someone that is also ignorant to the sparky sparky stuff I just saw a video on this and simply put: Thing makes power, the higher the voltage the less power that is lost moving through wires, so jack it up and send it along. However as you said the toaster doesn’t like high voltage so the transformer needs to lower it back down to usable toaster levels

[@calculon000]

@@samreid6010 Hey I have a question; Is there some kind of engineering reason why you wouldn't bury as many transmission lines as possible, or is it just purely cost? In my area there are so many power lines built next to tress and at least once a year it gets windy and the power goes out for several hours.

[@daddy0dead]

@@calculon000 Mainly cost. It's really expensive to bury the cables, all the paperwork to get permission to dig, plus faults are timeconsuming to localize and repair.

[@orana03]

I'm surprised how well this game models managing an energy grid. From the intermittency of wind power, the need for varied sources of power and energy storage systems.

[@sbsftw4232]

I wish my government would play this.

[@Usoppe2]

I would have liked to see transmission loss over distance but I don’t know how you would balance that into a fun game mechanic. I agree what is here is very well implemented.

[@darkpixel1128]

@@Usoppe2 isn't that usually solved by step up and step down transformers? Pretty sure you can transfer a long distance that way without significant loss

[@jeffjwatts]

@@Usoppe2 "I would have liked to see transmission loss over distance but I don’t know how you would balance that into a fun game mechanic." Transmission loss due to distance is minimal for high voltage lines (typically less than 2%). The game has you build substations, which is how electrical utilities actually avoid having significant electrical loss.

[@ancapftw9113]

And a healthy dose of "not in my back yard" with power plants.

[@DavidMGiles]

"I don't really understand electricity." We watch the Podcats, we know this.

[@koganusan4025]

jon was born in the wrong era. he should have been born 300 BC

[@darthmaul216]

@@koganusan4025 9,700 HE (human era)

[@jeffjwatts]

@@koganusan4025 "jon was born in the wrong era. he should have been born 300 BC" That's not fair at all. Jon would have made a fine Roman from 200 AD.

[@TauAlphaVu]

This is giving me bad flashbacks to the PodCats when Dan and Matt were trying to explain power to Jon.

[@loading9110]

Just electrons fucking about, innit.

[@morganrobinson8042]

Hearing him describe how he understands step-down transformers and wondering what happened to all the other volts was pretty chilling. And not even two minutes in.

[@stargate525]

Jon is the real life version of that Dara O'Brien routine about modern man trying to explain electricity; 'it comes from the wall'

[@scuddekr]

P=VI (power = Voltage x Current) so a power plant will generate at 34kV but transmitting power at that level is really hard. So you step the voltage up to 115-500kV but low current to transmit the power long distances. If you hook that voltage to a toaster the toast would not work out well. Therefore you step the voltage back down for distribution to houses businesses etc.

[@ManyATrueNerd]

Give me a rough idea of how on-fire the toast and/or house ends up?

[@5Andysalive]

however, if you hook this power directly to the bread it will be speedily tosated.

[@mrfez2353]

@@ManyATrueNerd the fuse would melt before anything could happen really, but if you didn't have the fuse the toasters heating element would melt. Which depending on how close the toast is to other flammable things could be a big issue.

[@samreid6010]

@@ManyATrueNerd essentially all the filaments (the little heating elements) would immediately turn into molten metal and snap. The problem wouldn’t be in the toaster, however. All the wires in your walls would also immediately turn molten and all the sudden your wall cavities have been turned into crucibles and all the wood in your house becomes very unhappy. The question that determines whether your house catches on fire or not is how long it takes the wires to fail. The longer they take, the more energy gets transformed to heat, the more likely your house is going to become a bonfire

[@mojoich2736]

@@ManyATrueNerd get out, stay out and get the fire brigade out

[@elijahm3688]

Jon: [turns off substation] Jon: [forgets to turn substation back on]

[@bobskool]

Jon every game ever: Jon: [does something] Jon: [forgets he did something]

[@candiedskull9841]

NIMBY: Not in my backyard; for power facilities and similar, people not wanting something that could harm them or their property value nearby

[@Scott_Forsell]

This power grids needs more roundabouts and one-ways. Perhaps bridge ballast would help.

[@morganrobinson8042]

Ironically, Considering the power distribution seems to self-correct draw to a certain extent, high voltage roundabouts with some redundancies would make a pretty good way to handle his energy storage.

[@pablorepetto7804]

I think you mean a power ballast

[@Scott_Forsell]

@@pablorepetto7804 Maybe if ... if we build up a big blob of power on either side of gap, it will hold. My ex is a city planner. I got her hooked on MATN kinda by accident. I seriously thought she was going to puke the first time she saw the Cityskylines video. She was saying "no no no no no no" as a mantra to hold away Jon's traffic schema. It was accidentally traumatic.

[@bdk336]

"I don't know where all the leftover power goes." Oh Jon... XD

[@qovro]

The game starts with 13 people, but 9.5 MW of demand. What are those people doing?

[@scuddekr]

Bitcoin mining

[@darthmaul216]

@@scuddekr I like your pfp

[@Kr0noZ]

Well tbf, it says 13 "blocks", which might be a lot of people depending on block size and density. Jon just didn't mention that slight simplification. Then again, who knows, maybe it's actually just 13 people running a data center each in the middle of nowhere to host all the p**n on the internet.

[@rikamayhem]

Some of the blocks look like buildings, possibly for public services or businesses and one is even an amusement park, so maybe it makes sense? Otherwise they must be all miners, of course. 9.5 MW would be ~440 households per block at 600 households per MW (peak-time estimate), but most of those do look like individual houses.

[@Just_A_Chair]

"I don't really understand how power works." Yes Jon I watched the Podcats.

[@tjep2670]

The oil plant needs water for the boilers. 100+ years and we still really haven't gotten past steam engines for the most part besides solar and wind.

[@jediphobic]

It turns out that boiling water into steam is a really efficient way to convert heat into other kinds of energy, like the kinetic energy in a turbine. Since a lot of the power sources we use are basically just different ways to produce heat, this turns out to be very useful. This is how fossil fuel plants like gas and coal work, as well as nuclear power. In theory, you can even collect solar energy this way, by using mirrors to concentrate a lot of sunlight and therefore heat onto a central location.

[@mastsh12]

Even most commercial scale solar plants just use the sun to heat up water into steam.

[@aligallaton3978]

As they say "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"

[@jvseventeen]

I love how this game is basically just you making the electricity work on someone else's city builder. That opens up a lot of story-telling ideas. It's a really cool concept in a potentially frustrating sort of way lol

[@jamesmaclennan4525]

Oh Lord Claire let Jon play with Electricity again..disaster

[@Khono]

2:30 this is realistic. Power is transmitted over longer distances at very high voltage (compared to what we're used to) to lower power loss. Transformers change the voltage, often stepping it down for our own use. Also the lower losses (which turn into heat) means less conductive material is needed to be used to avoid overload. --Source, I'm an electrical designer.

[@wsconsn]

Jon’s in control of South Englands power grid…. There is no way this ends well…

[@kingmdalby4569]

He probably runs the trains down there too considering... you know

[@DanielTimberwolf]

The best part about city builders is watching Jon play them, until the inevitable happens.

[@CommissarMitch]

I just came from the PodCats where we learn Jon have no idea how electricity works. This is gonna be fun

[@torgranael]

"I just shutdown my main power production facility, during teatime, and it didn't matter. It worked anyway. It turns out this entire network is genius." You had brownouts all over the place, and your most critical infrastructure nearly burst into flames. Yep, that checks out.

[@ThePiachu]

RE: the high / low voltage thing that I also had problems conceptualising in my electronics class. Basically, you have the same wattage going through the wire, but since wattage = current * voltage, you can transform one into the other. The more current you send down the line the more things will heat up and you'll get bigger losses, so it's more efficient to be sending high voltage low current electricity and convert it closer to consumers into low voltage high current since that is more convenient for household usage (less insulation, less deadly, etc.). So you're sending the same amount of wattage, only changing how that is expressed to minimise transmission losses and so on. Really nifty stuff!

[@christophernoneya4635]

I've wanted a game like this for a while, but I'd like to see them go further. Imagine youre given a small town that slowly growns and you need to provide the power with all this complexity, the clean water and the drainage both with their pipes and energy storage and considering height and cleaning and regulations, maybe even zoning to try and control traffic and demand for infrastructure. Sort of like an IRL Municipal engineer

[@Fish12421]

Sounds like you are just describing city skylines

[@Rocky1987TheRock]

@@Fish12421 more like Workers and Resources, but that also has a ton more stuff in it.

[@christophernoneya4635]

Cities skylines doesnt go anywhere near the depth of this game or the water systems I'd like to see, its actually fairly shallow because of its scale, lots of features but all pretty highlevel. Workers and resources is great, i'd love to see it focus more on infrastructure than industry though! also I dont believe it has proper piping yet, afaik. I'd love like a really small scale one, like a town that focuses entirely on the low-level details. Is this water running up hill, how much pressure can be put through this block, will we have enough pressure to maintain a water tower for storage (both energy and liquid), is our wastewater treatment downhill, etc. The real nitty-gritty

[@Fish12421]

@@christophernoneya4635 I see

[@KashouWannabe]

SimCity 3000 Unlimited was on offer on GoG, makes me want to see Jon tackle that one.

[@joypadbar]

“We’ve got to make sure these 13 fussy plebs have power” is one of the funniest things Jon has ever said.

[@ZeoCobra]

I am slightly impressed he did not attempt to make it a One way system or some sort of Electical Round-about.

[@Xenotric]

Oh Jon... thats not how it works, thats not how it works at all T_T those poor people. Volts aren't the "power" Amps are! Volts are Sisyphus, the boulder is the Amps. When the volts finally push the boulder up the hill, the boulder can be used to make a nice statue of zeus which then makes him happy enough to throw a lightning bolt at your bread to make toast! or something...

[@Chalkcs]

Jon: Destroys the battery farm Jon, two minutes lager: "The battery farm can pick up the slack"

[@mattparker9726]

2:47 it's mostly lost as heat Jon. Here in the USA mains power from generation plants run anywhere from 150,000 volts to nearly a million. But our houses use 120v. So there's plenty of stepping down not only at a main substation, but also at the pole into your house.

[@BarbarianGod]

I hope they expand this game someday to include water/heating distribution that's often part of coal and gas plants, and possibly have municipal heat pumps :D

[@tetsubo57]

Jon doesn't seem to understand quite a bit about how the world works. Based purely on what he himself has said. Without Claire I think he'd be lost.

[@kingmdalby4569]

Power in cables is like commuters. High voltage is the trains/subways, then people split up to go elsewhere so they move in smaller numbers. Same amount (mostly, power is weird) but just split up.

[@Rateus_Johanson]

That title pun is reVolting.

[@elibot]

Oh! It's electrons flipping about

[@spartan117zm]

I think one upgrade this game could use is the ability to control how much power uses certain lines, because in real life power utilities can control the amount of voltage they send down any specific line. I think that would help with having to constantly reshuffle the lines if you could dictate which city blocks can use which lines, and also, it would help with the duplication of high voltage lines since you wouldn’t have to worry about it automatically choosing the shortest path, you could force it to use a certain path to go to a certain city (or block), but perhaps they could balance that by having a tiny cost that is associated with a percentage of how far your power has to travel to its destination? Or, better yet, they could model the realistic function of power being sent less efficiently, meaning if you force it to take a longer route, not as much will actually get there due to transmission losses. Again this could be a percentage that is calculated solely based on distance (since in reality there’s many factors that affect power loss over lines).

[@ChaoticNeutralMatt]

It's different for different people, but I do enjoy managing resources

[@georgespence6727]

been waiting for one of my good KZbin guys cover this game to judge it and get their impression. Gameplay doesn't seem to bad and might be worth getting. Thanks for covering it.

[@thomasesr]

How electricity works: Electricity has voltage and current. Watt is a measure of power, current multiplied by voltage (W=V*I) . And watt hour is a measure of power over time, which is energy. To transmit energy you need a cable. The cable has a resistance which will resist against the flow of current. This resistance will consume power to generate heat. The longer the cable, the bigger the resistance. The thicker the cable the lesser the resistance. Since the cable resists current flow and power is a factor of Current and Voltage, you can decrease the current by increasing the voltage. The higher the voltage the lesser the current to transmit the same amount of power. You can make this change with a simple transformer. Which means that you can transmit a lot of energy over long distances with thinner cables (cheaper) and higher voltages. As soon as you need to consume this energy you pass it through another transformer to step down the voltage again and increase the current.

[@zas240]

Think of a room that's cold with a hot radiator. If you leave it a while, the rest of the room heats up a few degrees to a comfortable temperature. That's your transformer. It's taken a small amount of "hot" and turned it into a large amount of "warm". The total amount of heat is the same, it's just concentrated differently. The radiator is your high voltage power supply, and the room is the substation. You turn a small bit of high voltage power (current actually but let's not go there) into a large amount of low voltage power (current).

[@bulshock1221]

So. The substation converters alter the voltage and amperage of the electricity. There are two types. Step up and step down. Step up increases the voltage, this is for going long distances. Step down decreases the voltage, this is for the house. It's converted by altering the amperage of the electricity so the power (watts) stays the same. This is because watts (P) = volts (V) * amperage (I). So in the case of step up converters it increases the voltage by lowering the amps and keeping the watts the same, because if the amperage was still as large as normal for it it would need absolutely massive cables. Step down converters lower the voltage and increase the amps to a different level. From there the transformer creates a branch to the location it's going to and steps down the voltage again, increasing the amperage to the household (or industrial) level used for running the appliances. There is a fourth aspect to this that is also involved (resistance measured in Ohms), and that also has to be taken into account for the substations and transformers, but those three aspects are likely 'good enough' for an understanding of why. There is also frequency, but that's a whole 'nother headache.

[@sotnosen95]

I like how the buildings you place literally just fall out of the sky.

[@mattparker9726]

Please do continue this game as a series, Jon!

[@ZakisHereNow]

Seriously, Jon?!? I have too many games already that I don’t have the time to play! Now I have to add another one to the list!

[@gtbkts]

Thanks for the awesome content!

[@TheShinyShow]

I just recently watched the Simcity 4 and Cities Skylines videos so this was perfect timing.

[@calebcooper522]

This is what I do for a job and I thought I could take a break

[@mattparker9726]

4:02 some power companies offer discounts if you buy power during non peak hours. At least here, I dunno about Britain.

[@thesarcasticsettler252]

Jon is the real reason energy prices are skyrocketing.

[@starlightbreaker561]

power plants produce normal voltage and amplitude power, but this is very inefficient to transport, so a transformer converts it to very high voltage, low current. This way it's very cheap to transport the power, but it needs to be unpacked to normal current and voltage at another transformer before it's good to use in domestic power applications. Very high voltage will cause sparks within electrical components, especially our complex electronics which are on the verge of sparking in normal conditions.

[@valliantsteed]

Once more. Jon, I would like to recommend INFRA to you. I think you're gonna like it.

[@Scott_Forsell]

No one man should have all that power

[@NicholasHay1982]

Every time Jon says "What can you do, eh?" all I can hear is Carol Klein.

[@pennyc7833]

"Power to the People" ... For some reason I read that as "People are the Power" and I thought it was going to be one where you had to build up the population because they were the fuel source via sacrifice or intentional culling.

[@Plelement94]

Plot twist for that icebound city builder

[@ryanpayne7707]

Voltage is NOT power. Voltage is analogous to water pressure. Electrical power, wattage, is the product of electrical current and voltage. Every device needs a minimum voltage to function (120V for most things here in the US.) Too little voltage, and current would not be able to overcome electrical resistance and inductance, and hence, now power would flow. Too much voltage, and you fry said devices. Then it gets a bit more complicated as most places use alternating current, where the current continueously changes from a positive to a negative extreme along a sine wave.

[@Simonsavvi]

it's not leftover electricity. The best way to try to explain it is electricity is slowed down in converter stations, not cut down.

[@wtfronsson]

Autosubtitles at the intro say "mania Trudeau" instead of many a true nerd. lmao.

[@kaibrockway5867]

I smell a livestream

[@Hazlius]

This is a fascinating game and should be used in civil engineering courses

[@snyparaustralis540]

NIMBY - not in my back yard

[@mattparker9726]

OH COOL!

[@TruthXile]

Bright-On isn't looking so Bright or On :3

[@gargoyles9999]

I think Jon might be running South Africa’s power grid

[@MitchellImohA7X]

29:50. I definitely rushed to buy this game before finishing the video. Are you a magician?

[@Grompulous]

Is there something like an affiliate link for steam games that could get MATN a commission? I buy a lot of games Jon plays.

[@LPNeogetz]

Jokes on you, I bought it using my phone so I didn't have to leave the video

[@Auraborias]

That title, Darn you

[@dashiellgillingham4579]

The North American electrical grid can be defined as the largest machine ever built.

[@EmilFr]

Right you are, but there are 3 separate grids in the USA, eastern one (parts of witch also go into Canada), western and then Texas has their own grid so they don't have to follow federal regulations

[@letlotloselaledi3237]

NIMBY(Not in my back yard) . I did expect to be reminded of George Carlin today

[@ajmusicforme]

i know im late, but please soemone tell me what jon says in his intro. the CC says "good afternoon lace jump"... theres no way that that is correct

[@macgamer1]

"Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen." He says it at the start of almost all of his videos.

[@Auraknight]

Could someone tell me why I'm stupid for just wanting to build all power generation and storage far away from everything, nice and neatly made where it won't bother anyone?

[@volentimeh]

Cost and powerloss from long powerline runs probably.

[@davidmcdavidson999]

Brighton lol.

[@ancapftw9113]

It's bit weird seeing a British guy play a game with British town names, buying things using Dollars instead of Pounds or Euros.

[@epsomsalts592]

"Power to The People!" are you a member of the Tooting Popular Front?

[@MonsieurMammoth]

Does Jon not recognise towns in the south of England?

[@librarianseth5572]

Day 653 of requesting Zoo Tycoon. Power grids are the bane of my existence when playing Jurassic World Evolution 2, because there's always that one power substation that goes out if a breeze comes through. An entire GAME based on that might be a hard sell for me, but Jon playing it is another matter

[@Scott_Forsell]

I'm an American and I use an electric tea kettle. I used to use the American default standard stove-top whistling tea kettle. One day I wanted some tea, filled up up the kettle and set the burner to high. I did not notice the whistle thingie was not seated properly. Wandered off. Got distracted by a movie or a game or something. Bastard did not whistle. Went back to the kitchen several hours later and it dawned on me, "Oh, yeah, the tea kettle, you idiot!" It had boiled dry several hours back and had just sat there getting hotter and hotter. That mother was freaking hot. Surface of the sun hot. I had one of those fancy, schmancy glass top stoves - that bleeper cost a lot. I picked up a towel and tried to pluck up the kettle and a perfect 10 inch circle of the glass stove-top sorta disintegrated where the kettle had been sitting for several hours. And this was a decently spendy brand, I believe it was an Amana. Glass bits just just rained down on the burner coil unit underneath. Lesson learned. Now I use an electric kettle. If I space out now it won't cost me $600 USD. I liked that stove - it was black and nickel and really pulled the room together.

[@mackpapi9818]

Hey dere jon

[@woolldogg2329]

Empires ep 2?

[@CZOM027]

Apparently labeling others white supremacists is Jon's new shield to a cause.

[@LilleMiir]

Dragonage?

[@globalincident694]

its gone

[@JesusChristMyLord]

Thankfully it’s ended and not a moment sooner

[@aparrotformrpoirot8906]

i have lived in Brighton and bridport lol bridport s no in right place is in dorse' should be shoreham haha vis bridport if u can is nice has a good market no all ke s work soz

[@richardvaldes3959]

Take off your mask

[@darthmaul216]

It’s a free country