How to Play Power Grid: Recharged – Auctions, Resources & Networks
Power Grid: Recharged is an economic network game in which every round links four markets: power plants, fuel, city connections and electricity income. The same money must fund all four, so overspending in one phase can leave your company unable to exploit the others.
Edition scope. This guide covers Rio Grande Games’ Recharged edition. Individual maps can change setup, resource supply or other details.
1. Determine player order
Player order is recalculated during the game from network size and power-plant information. Being first is not always an advantage: several later phases run in reverse order, giving trailing players earlier access to resources and city connections.
2. Auction power plants
Players take turns deciding whether to offer an available power plant for auction. The initiating player makes the first bid and other eligible players may raise it until only one bidder remains. A player normally acquires at most one plant per round.
Each plant shows the resources it consumes and how many cities it can power. Ecological plants require no fuel; hybrid plants can use more than one resource type. Plant-market rules remove and replace cards as the game advances.
3. Buy resources in reverse player order
Beginning with the last player, companies buy coal, oil, garbage and uranium from the shared resource market. Prices rise as cheaper spaces empty, so buying heavily can make the same fuel much more expensive for opponents acting later in the phase.
You may only store fuel your plants can use, and plant storage limits prevent unlimited hoarding.
4. Build your network in reverse player order
Connect to cities by paying the city cost plus the cheapest legal connection cost from your existing network. Your first city can be chosen freely within the active map area; later cities must connect through the network.
The game’s Steps control how many players may occupy each city. As later Steps begin, competition for city slots changes and additional market rules take effect.
5. Bureaucracy: power cities and earn money
Choose which plants to run, pay their printed fuel requirements and power up to the number of connected cities those plants can supply. Income is based on the number of cities actually powered, not simply the number connected to your network.
After income, the resource market is replenished according to the current Step and player count, and the plant market is updated for the next round.
The end trigger is about network size; winning is about powered cities
When a player reaches the game-end network size specified by the rules for the current player count, the game moves to its final resolution. The winner is not automatically the player who triggered the end: players compare how many cities they can actually power in the final bureaucracy.
Continue learning
- Power Grid: Recharged game guide
- Power Grid: Recharged strategy
- Power Grid: Recharged endgame and winner
Sources and scope
Checked September 20, 2026. Map-specific exceptions should be read from the relevant map rules.