Electric network's circuit network interaction

[awesomescorpion]

The electric network is very complex with lots of different types of values, many of which would be valuable to automatically read and calculate with, i.e.: circuit network. But currently the only electric network component that interacts with the circuit network is the accumulator, which is imperfect in many ways when it comes to providing information.

I would like to have circuit access to the following values:
1. how much power is being consumed?
2. how much power could be consumed if more power were to be produced?
3. how much power is being produced?
4. how much power could be produced if more power were to be consumed?
5. how much potential power production is not available due to lack of steam/sunlight?
6. how much potential power consumption is not available due to inactive machines?
7. how much power could a specific circuit-connected solar panel potentially provide at the time? Same question for steam engines, steam turbines, and accumulators. (this value is flexible under time of day, available steam, and whether or not the accumulator is charged.)

Currently, all I have access to is the charge of a specific accumulator. Thankfully, all accumulators in a network are identical so I can at least infer and induce some of these answers, but not all, and the answers I do get access to are often vague and uncertain. If the charge is maximal I can know that the network as a whole is satisfied. But I can only know that once the accumulator has filled up (increasing response time), and have no clue how much wiggle room I have left. Similarly, I can tell from an empty accumulator that there is unmet demand, but beyond that I know almost nothing about said unmet demand. Some tricky heuristics might increase how much knowledge we can assume, but this is all very indirect and cumbersome, for a value that should be measurable directly.

When thinking about the practical application, the fact that circuit networks travel distances through electrical poles poses an issue, since you don't always want that information clogging up the signals of that particular network. I would recommend repurposing the shift+mouse1 combination to open a building gui with a "connect to circuit network" button on the pole, rather than disconnecting the pole from all surrounding poles, which is a feature I more often used than I wanted to anyway. That way, you can manually choose if a pole connected to a circuit network is part of that network or merely carries it. I recommend making the carrying of the network the default function, and have the electrical network information be an opt-in functionality.

Thoughts?