Factorio Forums

You probable know this.You can connect a huge factory to a power source just with one small electric pole.
1.if you do this the copper wire which makes the connection between the power source(steam engine,capacitors,solar panels,other mods power sources) and the huge factory will start to melt or if the Watt consume is at the limit will be red.
2.to prevent this is needed to connect the factory and the power source with multiple small/medium/big electric pole
3.if you don't want to connect whit multiple poles need to exist a high tension pole (not big electric pole) with bigger copper wires.
(pls tell me your opinion about this)

Currently, power flow inside a power network is not simulated. This means that power can flow freely inside a power network. It also means that the CPU has very little work to do.

It would be nice if power poles had a limited power flow capacity, since it would require your power infrastructure to have a stronger backbone. However, this would also require the game to simulate power flow in detail, instead of having simple power networks. I'm afraid that this would be a lot of work to program and also would cost a lot of CPU time to make all the calculations. Without simulating power flow in detail, the game has no way of knowing whether a particular copper wire is overloaded or not.

Also, certain things which work now would no longer work if power flow were restriced inside a power network. For example, it is currently possible to determine the battery power of the whole power network by simply attaching an accumulator to the circuit network. This works because, as a rule, all accumulators have the same power level. However, this assumption would no longer be valid if power couldn't flow freely inside a power network, due to one wire being overloaded.

For some technical information about how power networks work internally in Factorio, see Factorio Friday Facts #115.

NOTE: Some of the text of my post above is nearly identical to what I posted in this neighboring thread about restricting power flow between power networks. This neighboring topic is quite similar to the topic in this thread and the original poster is the same person. However, I do consider it justified to have two separate threads, because the topic is different.

See also viewtopic.php?f=80&t=15546 Cable Resistance / Non-looseless Power Transmission
which explains the details in detail.