EDIT: Thanks to Viper1989 I updated it to show the nuclear PP as well.
Also there is no Dam, since I think it's very dependent on it's lengh, power of water etc, so it's hard to get a good reference point.
But, to the point. Besides the two mentioned PP there are 5 other.
Name | Cost*10^3 | MW/week | maintenance/week | noise pol. | pol. |
Wind | 6 | 8 | 80 | 75 | 0 |
Adv. Wind | 12 | 20 | 200 | 75 | 0 |
Coal | 19 | 40 | 560 | 50 | 50 |
Oil | 50 | 120 | 1920 | 50 | 35 |
Solar | 80 | 160 | 1200 | 25 | 0 |
Nuclear | 200 | 640 | 8000 | 50 | 0 |
From this table I calculated this one:
Name | cost/MW | maint./week/MW |
Wind | 750 | 10 |
Adv. Wind | 600 | 10 |
Coal | 475 | 14 |
Oil | 416,7 | 16 |
Solar | 500 | 7,5 |
Nuclear | 312,5 | 12,5 |
And this one:
Name\Name | Wind | Adv. Wind | Coal | Oil | Solar | Nuclear |
Wind | x | x | 68,75 | 55,6 | x | 175 |
Adv. Wind | 0* | x | 31,25 | 30,6 | x | 115 |
Coal | x | x | x | 29,2 | x | x |
Oil | x | x | x | x | x | x |
Solar | 0 | 0 | 3,8 | 9,8 | x | 37,5 |
Nuclear | x | x | 0 | 0 | x | x |
The second table is: after how many weeks the Power Plant which name is in column will return the investment compared to the one listed in row.
0 means that it's both cheaper and have lower maintenace, thus returning instantly, with Adv Wind/Wind with asterix due to the fact that it's not more efficient (so if You won't change from Wind to Advanced Wind You won't lose money).
EDIT: Thanks to Ateerix providing me with "Fusion power plant wonder" statistics I'll also add it here. It's out of analysis, since it's a wonder and is extremly Efficient in every way.
build cost *10^3 | MW/week | maint/week | noise pol. | polution | cost/MW | maint/MW/week | |
Fusion power plant wonder | 1 000 | 16 000 | 8 000 | 75 | 0 | 62,5 | 0,5 |
It's extremly efficient, opun unlocking build it ASAP! You can only have one though, so if You believe 16 000 MW would not be enough for Your city (perhaps in long run) do not destroy solar power plants, rather disable them (if it would prove to put maintenance to 0).
EDIT END
Now, the conclusions:
Solar Power Plant is by far superior when compared to any other PP, so Player should always aim to replace whole energy production to Solar as soon as the budget allows.
Nuclear power plants are useless, since they are less cost-effective than Solar (which are unlocked earlier). They do however have lower build cost and they will take less space per MW than Photovoltaic cells, so they can be very situationally useful. But, as a general rule of thumbs, one should stick with solar energy.
One should never (unless there is problem with space, of course) upgrade from Wind PP to Advanced Wind PP, but upon unlocking Advanced one one should forget about the first one (unless the situation is dire (lack of energy and budget), but in fact it applies to all rules, unless stated otherwise, so I would stop writing that).
The return rate of Wind PP when compared to Coal PP is very long, so in my opinion only the first one, maybe two power plant (for initial use, when demand for energy is low, and budget and income can be troublesome) the next PP should be Coal.
Advanced Wind PP has far better return rate, so it should be the main power station from the moment of unlocking it up to the moment of unlocking Solar PP.
Oil PP are pretty much redundand, since the return rate of Advanced wind PP is reasonably low, and the latter are unlocked earlier.
Since the game offers us extremly large amount of space (36km^2) Polution of both types shouldn't be a concern in well planned city, thus I haven't accounted them. I also haven't considered incineration plants, as they are mainly a way to get rid of garbage (it would be extremly unlikely that someone would build them in order to get energy, it's an additional bonus).
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Side note: I wanted to do this also for water treatment facility and sewage dump, but sewage is in almost every way better that treatment plant. With so much space the water polution is pretty much only looking bad. Unless the player has totally failed in planning his city (and, I don't know, forgot about possibility of moving services? seriously, this is weak) or has very limited access to river (which also is a bit weak, there will almost certainly be an area with long enough bank available) there is no point in puting more expensive (both in terms of build cost and maintenance) facility.
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I want to thank Viper1989 for posting a nuclear power plant statistics. Thanks to Danny-Dynamita for pointing out a culculus mistake. Thanks to Ateerix for providing data for fusion power plant wonder.
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