Power Grid

Components

Setup

1. 1Unfold the board. For a first game, the Germany side is recommended.
2. 2Use only the number of contiguous areas matching your player count to define the playing zone (table below).
3. 3Each player takes 22 houses, 50 Elektro, and one payment summary card. Place one house on space 0 of the cities-connected scoring track.
4. 4Randomly determine player order and place one house per player on the player order track.
5. 5Fill the resource market to its starting state — coal fills from space 1, oil from space 3, garbage from space 6, and uranium from space 14. The rest of the tokens form a supply pile.
6. 6Place the resource refill summary card matching your player count beside the resource market.
7. 7Shuffle the power plant cards with a plug on the back (03–15), draw the top 8, and arrange them in ascending order — the lowest 4 form the "current market" (available for auction), the rest the "future market" (preview only). Set one more card aside face down.
8. 8Shuffle the remaining power plant cards (socket-backed, 16+) face down, bury the "Step 3" card somewhere in that stack, and place the card you set aside on top.
9. 9Place the auction hammer and discount token beside the power plant market, and the "Step 2"/"Game End" barriers beside the scoring track.

A round — five phases

1. 1① Determine player order — the player with the most connected cities goes first (ties broken by the largest power plant); players take the matching spaces on the order track.
2. 2② Auction power plants — in that order, each player may buy at most one power plant this round.
3. 3③ Buy resources — now in reverse order (last place first), players buy resources for their power plants.
4. 4④ Build houses — again in reverse order, players connect new cities to their networks.
5. 5⑤ Bureaucracy — players earn Elektro for the electricity they supply, the resource market is resupplied, and the power plant market is updated.

Auctioning power plants — current market of 4 + future market of 4

1. 1The first player in turn order either starts an auction with one card from the current market (the front row of 4), or opts out of buying entirely this round.
2. 2That plant's minimum bid is the number printed on it (or 1 Elektro if the discount token sits on it).
3. 3Going clockwise, players raise the bid or pass. When only one bidder remains, they pay their bid and take the plant.
4. 4The buyer immediately draws a replacement card, refilling the market to 8 and re-sorting it into the lowest 4 (current) and highest 4 (future).
5. 5If the player who started the auction loses it, the winner starts the next auction. A player who has already bought a plant this round may neither start nor join another auction.

Buying resources — cheapest space first

1. 1This phase runs in reverse order, starting with the last-place player.
2. 2A power plant can store at most twice the number of resource tokens it needs. Hybrid plants share that limit across both resource types.
3. 3Always buy the cheapest filled space of a resource first. If a resource type runs out during the round, nobody can buy more of it until the next resupply.
4. 4On the USA map, coal can always be bought for a flat 8 Elektro from the storage space once the market runs out.

Building houses — a network that grows over three Steps

A new city must connect from a city already in your network (your very first city may be any empty city). You pay the printed connection cost to reach it plus the building cost for placing your house there.

Phase ⑤ Bureaucracy — cities supplied → income

1. 1In turn order, each player declares how many cities to supply this round (up to their connected cities, limited by resources and plants on hand).
2. 2Consume the declared amount of resources, then earn the Elektro shown below. Even supplying zero cities guarantees 10 Elektro.
3. 3Unused resources may be kept on a plant for next round, within its storage limit.

Ending the game

1. 1The moment phase ④ (Build Houses) ends and someone has reached the threshold above, the game ends immediately.
2. 2In the final phase ⑤, nobody earns Elektro. Instead, everyone compares how many cities they can actually supply with their current plants and resources.
3. 3Whoever can supply the most cities wins. Ties are broken by remaining money.

Strategy tips

• Going early in phases ① and ② lets you pick plants first, but phases ③ and ④ then make you buy and build last. Racing to first place early just means paying the highest prices once your turn finally comes.
• Always check the future market (the back row of 4) — it previews which big plants are coming, so you can plan your budget ahead of time.
• More power plants isn't automatically better — what matters is reliably keeping them fueled. Hybrid (coal/oil) plants adapt better to resource market swings.
• As the end nears, calculate suppliable cities, not just connected ones. A player who only connected more cities but can't power them still loses.

Editions and expansions

Frequently confused rules

History and editions

German designer Friedemann Friese reworked his own crayon game "Funkenschlag" (where connections were drawn in crayon directly on the map) into "Power Grid", released in 2004 by 2F-Spiele (German) and Rio Grande Games (English). It made the 2005 Games Magazine Games 100, was a 2005 Spiel des Jahres recommendation, a 2004 International Gamers Award Best Strategy Game nominee, and placed in the top 3 of the 2004 Meeples' Choice Award.

The 2014 tenth-anniversary "Power Grid Deluxe" redrew components with Europe/North America maps and swapped garbage for natural gas. The 2018 "Power Grid Recharged" brought back the double-sided Germany/USA board while adding new play aids like the discount token and Step barriers — this is the current base edition distributed by Rio Grande Games.

In Korea, Korea Boardgames first released a Germany/Korea map configuration, later switched to the same Germany/USA configuration as the English edition, and has distributed it as "Power Grid Recharged" since January 2021. BoardGameGeek classifies its average weight in the mid-3 range, a heavy economic game.