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 There needs to be more power options. I would recommend a biofuel or methane powerplant, to make better use of agricultural and/or waste products. A wind power source with associated tools to see wind speed zones. These would make some long term power sources that would not be subject to source depletion. Wind could be affected be seasons.  I would also highly recommend that the power grid have smart batteries  to allow for automated power storage and supply switching. This would allow the player to focus on building infrastructure instead of micro managing individual battery settings which is horribly monotonous. I also really like the storage of lightning into batteries that was added in this latest patch. 

This is great! I was thinking about this earlier -- nuclear power, wind power, and hydropower would be great additions. Water and other molecular compounds are also available to us now for fuel alternatives. Solar power and geothermal are easy to manage, but are rather boring to maintain.

How about a hydroelectric power plant to utilize those cool waterfalls a few of the maps have? And I concur on power grids and smart battery management. I get that power is supposed to be a valuable commodity but it gets so tedious having to build 20 more solar panels just to get a few other buildings up and running and have breathing room for winter. When you've got a thriving colony with a booming economy, power shouldn't be such a hassle to maintain. I was disappointed that the Zorium plants didn't generate as much power as I had expected. 100 is great for a colony thats starting to shape up in size but it's not enough by the time you've really got your ball rolling.

Yeah, totally agree. I was playing on sandbox last night and it became clear that Zorium in addition to geo-thermal was not going to work. Biofuel was what I would also suggest. For the smart batteries, there could be a new policy for automatic switching of batteries depending on need.

Another option could be global efficiency research to reduce the power need for different types of structure. This is primarily for the late game, so could be for a tier 2 or 3 research center with a long research time requirement.

I like the sound of the hydroelectric plant.  The wind farms would be useful up on the mountains and rock formations, though the problem would be transferring electricity down to the colony...

Hmm...one idea I read about to make wind power more efficient at producing electricity, was to make special balloons that have fins on them, and have them float constantly higher up in the air, where the wind is constant.  The electricity the spinning balloon would make could be transferred down 1 or more cables down to a power station on the ground. 

Now on Earth, setting up balloons like that would be a bit of a problem, due to low-flying planes and birds possibly hitting it.  Or worse, storms.  But on Aven Prime, it might not be such a problem, due to lack of air traffic.  I mean, even with the colony cities and towns, the planet is sparsely populated, and the only air traffic would be shuttles for trade and transporting colonists from the ship.  They could easily avoid such balloons.  Only thing is, we wouldn't actually be able to see the wind-generating balloons because of their altitude.  All you would see was a small power plant with a cable going up into the sky.  The balloons could also have to have little lightning rods on them, due to the winter storms. 

Perhaps the balloons wouldn't be a good idea...oh well. 

I agree on new power sources and smart mode for batteries. And on reserch, too. 🙂

Another option would be the ability to trade easier for Zorium (or another fuel). In the late game when the local deposits have dried up, maybe we can trade for Zorium exchanging high value processed items from Mills or Chemical plants? So then the game would turn to establishing decent manufacturing for exporting goods. An actual factory might be good creating items from sludge and other processed chemicals for trade and "consumer morale".

I agree, more power options would be good, however, what I would like to see would be more options for automated power systems. In the game currently, there is a pretty bad death-spiral where if your people become too unhappy, and you get most of your power from geothermal or Zorium, then your power plants will drop production, making people more unhappy & shutting of essential buildings, which makes more unhappy people, which shuts off more buildings, until all your farms and water supply buildings are offline, and your people starve. More options, and better options, for automated power could mitigate that potential problem.