I'm hoping that this has given you some hints as to how to place your Hydro Plant dam and how to avoid any issues that may occur with your Hyrdo Plant not working. While it may look like you need to change things around a bit, start with waiting a while to see if everything kicks in before destroying the dam and potentially causing some catastrophic event for your city. The Reddit image below shows what happens when a dam appears to not be working. This might mean that the water flowing through the dam might just stop. Even though the graphics might show that there is a strong current coming out of the lake, at the end of the day, a lake does not have a constant supply of water. Placement is absolutely key, so what could also be happening when your Hydro Plant doesn't work is that the dam has been placed near the mouth of a lake. Luckily, water does disperse, so it wouldn't have been forever. If I hadn't already protected part of my city with flood barriers, I would have had residents under water. This is one of the reasons for building your dam in a rocky area. Every time I placed a dam in one of my simulations, it triggered a tidal wave. Reports from Reddit and Youtube suggest that it can take as much as 5 mins of IRL time for the Hydro Dam's mechanics to kick in and the plant to start generating electricity.ĭuring this waiting time, lots of things can happen. The big thing to remember when building a Hydro Plant is that the effect is not immediate. I Think I Have Found a Good Place, But Now My Dam Isn't Operating Water flows at different strengths in Cities: Skylines. Here, the sheer volume of water flowing through your Hydro Plant will compensate for the water's slower flow. For smaller stretches of water, big arrows are key to water flow, but if you wish to build across a very wide bit of water, flow strength isn't entirely crucial. A stretch of water with bigger arrows denotes a fast flow. Next, you have to take into consideration the flow of the water you wish to build across. If you place it near low-lying land, you risk flooding the surrounding area. Ideally, you should be placing it where there are cliffs or high embankments. One of the first things you need to be looking for when placing your Hydro Dam is the level of the land on either side of your river. There are a number of maps that have rivers as standard pieces of the environment, or you can make your own using Cities: Skylines' terraforming functions. To build a Hydro Power Plant (or Dam), you need to have reached a population of 12,000 in your city and have access to flowing water. Developer: Tantalus Media Publisher: Paradox Interactive Platforms: PS4, PC, Xbox One Genre: Simulation, Strategy Rating: E for Everyone Price: 39.99. Where Do You Need to Build Your Hydro Power Plant? But what happens when you find your Hydro Plant not working or operating? Well, read on for some general tips to prevent this from happening and what to do when - or if - it does.