Factorio Forums

when I place electric poles they don't produce electricity!

and my boilers are not working!

How does your steam engine setup look like? You need to connect an offshore pump to boilers to steam engines. Ideally one pump to 14 boilers to 10 engines. Or 7 boilers and 5 engines to start with.

Something like this is a typical setup:
https://wiki.factorio.com/images/SteamSetupExample.png
Or this:
http://cdn.vanillaforums.com/pennyarcad ... ommd9j.jpg
(though there is no need to run the coal belt between the engines)

In addition to o what Serenity said, make sure all your power lines are actually connected together and are connected to the Steam Engines setup and whatever you are trying to power. Also you need to actually hook up a power draining structure to get things working. If there is nothing hooked up that takes power then the Steam Engines with flash a symbol that looks like it is broken and won't do anything until you hook up power drain.

fluid mechanics also are important I think because I placed pipe wrongly and fluids wasn't warmed up even if connected to boilers