How electricity works in Cities Skylines 2

Electricity in Cities Skylines 2 is weird. Linking up the various electric cables to a power supply and trying to feed it back into your city shouldn’t be this complicated but somehow Paradox managed to make it so.

After spending a good 500 hours on the original Cities Skylines, I went into the sequel completely baffled by how much of the game was the same, but also how much had been changed, fine-tuned, and improved. Even electricity, which was so simple to get to grips with, has been changed, leaving me puzzled about what exactly I was meant to do.

Thankfully after a few minutes of playing, and taking the time to read, rather than skip the tutorial, I found out what you need to do to save everyone reading this time. So, here is exactly how electricity works.

How to connect electricity to your city in Cities Skyline 2

Unlike in Cities Skylines, the sequel has a different method for using electricity. No longer do you need to connect your electric cable above ground, as this time, everything is handled underground instead.

With your electric cable or power line, you have the option to the left of the mini menu to change a bunch of options including Tool Mode, Snapping, etc. In the side menu, there is a singular option you are looking for to get electricity to work.

1. Open up the Electric Menu on the toolbar.
2. Select Electric Cable
3. Set Elevation to -10m in the sidebar
4. Connect your Wind Turbine, Coal Power Plants, etc, to a road using this cable
5. The street that you connected to should now have power.

If you select the Electric Cable and then set the Elevation to -10m, you can connect it to the various roads. You can also connect roads that have power with those that don’t. The electricity will then be sent to all the homes, shops, and industries in that road source so long as you are generating enough power for all the buildings.

You can build these structures above ground, but you will still need to feed the wire back underground to connect to roads to make everything work.