How Does Power and Signal Transfer Work?

[PrimeEagle]

I'm trying to understand how to mod circuit signal transfer and electricity. For example, for making new types of power poles or to make wireless versions of electricity and circuit signals. I'm a little unclear on how this works or where to start. Any recommendations for a tutorial or an overview of how the API works for this?

[Stringweasel]

Electricity is quite hardcoded and is not easy mod. The fundemental behaviour is that if two poles are connected with copper wire they will always share an electric network. Can't change the wire type, or how the network works.

If you want wireless power you will likely have to create a second surface which does the actual connection. You can have cross-surface wires. You can see how this mod does it. It will work signals and electricity

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/aai-signal-transmission
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/shortwave