the idea of electricity i am sure has been mentioned before
we are talking about the possibility of rails and making connections between towns etc..
so why not have, buildable powerplants , a special building from which powerlines can be connected and connections built to neighboring cities to electrical substations, which would be buildings in which connections can be made to buildings in town and down other roads, each connection would have a switch so if someone doesn't pay their bill, they get cut
back to powerplants, inside we should build each generator seperatly and each can seperatly be fueled with their huge fuel tanks, and also each can be set at a % of operation. the generators can take any of the fuels, charcoal, coal, propane, alcahol, petrol, biodiesel. each with their own consumption rates per unit power generated. (i am not expecting uranium to be created in game for powerplants, that would be suicidal to mine, besides, cantr is a nuclear free zone
)we could make radios require electricity, radios on land vehicles are okay since they have engines, radios on ships we'll have to figure out, possibly allow a special smaller generator of which only 1 can be built in a cabin or hold giving it's power to the whole ship, and having more would be useless unless you are turning a cargo hold into a mass radio listening post.
if the power demands are greater than the power generated on a grid, then the % power should be applied to everything requiring power say we only fill 70% of the power demand, all radios on that grid should operate at 70% thier applicable ranges
if we want to make more resources usable and create more of an economy this would go a long way towards it, makes fuels more in demand, can cause an effect for a tax or a service a gov can charge people for. adressing the complaints about lack of economy, and overabundance of stockpiles of eternal resources.
this also opens up possibility of more new items to be made like electric stoves
possibly make it such that, if we hook up a lighthouse to power, it shines brighter than current and can effectivly be seen twice as far when fully powered, you know, an improvement from the assumed candle and mirrors inside the light casing.
measure of power easily enough would be watts. power generated in watts and power needed to run the various equipment also measured in watts, makes it easy to figure out how much power a region needs. this would really bring a powerful(forgive the pun) dynamic to the game that many concern is missing.