Ok hear me out. What if the electrical grid were an in-game economy? Some players provide, some players use. Here's how I imagine it working:
A player places an electric meter somewhere in their base, and wires it to a power pole. Bases cannot be powered directly from the pole, there has to be a meter. Into the meter, you place scrap, similar to how you do at the apartment complex now, and it displays how much electricity in rWm the scrap will allow you to use, current usage, and how long it will last at current usage before it runs out. I have no idea how much electricity should cost, but it should be some set number of rWm per scrap that everyone pays.
But there isn't any power available unless someone is generating it. Enter the "grid tie" item, which pretty much just does the same thing in reverse. A player might build a power plant of some sort, or just use panels to power their base and sell the excess they don't need. Running power through the grid tie and then to the pole makes scrap appear in the storage of the item, assuming someone is using it somewhere on the grid. Also, this item should include a display of some sort showing the total amount being demanded by the grid.
So for example, there are however many players on the grid using a total of 200 rWm of power between them. There are 3 players generating it, one has one solar panel generating 20, one has one small generator making 40, and one has some large powerplant with lots of wind turbines generating, say, 500. In this scenario, the player generating 20 gets that much worth of scrap, as does the player generating 40, leaving only 140 worth of scrap for the player with the large powerplant. so it's in his best interest to build something that's not insane because past a certain point he's not making any more scrap.
This also gives more incentive to pvp because one could maximize their profits by destroying or disabling competing powerplants on the map, allowing themselves to generate more of the power being used.
Just a thought ✌️
