Pretty important stuff really, power. Without it, your city would never get off the ground, and if you run out of it at some point then your Sims start leaving you in droves. Power really hasn't changed much through the series, in the original Sim City you could lay underground powerlines (which is something you can't do in SC2k or SC3k - bring that feature back please), but apart from that the actual power plants you can build have changed a little (for the worse in SC3k, IMO) but...

Improving power over time

One contributor pointed out that Coal power plants have been improved considerably over the last few decades and they now don't pollute nearly as much as they used to. It'd be nice if this was reflected in the game by the level of pollution from these power plants dropping after a certain year. The same goes for Nuclear power plants. It stands to reason that the technology in nuclear plants would be developed over time so that it'd be much less likely for you to have a meltdown in 2020 than in 1960.

Hydroelectric

One of my best Sim City 2000 cities had an abolutely huge mountain in one corner which was almost completely covered in hyrdro-electric power plants. This proved very handy, as if my Fusion power plant (that did most of the power providing) blow up, the Hydro stuff was enough to power about a third of the city while I saved up for a new Fusion one. I was hoping to be able to do a similar sort of thing when I got Sim City 3000 but alas, hydro-electric power plants were no more...

I really don't know why Hydro-electric power was left out of SC3000 - it's a clean, cheap and almost non-polluting power source so I'd like to see it re-introduced in SC4000. A few people have also suggested allowing as to dam rivers to form man-made lakes, which would be a good power source and would mean hydro-electric power wasn't restricted to areas with waterfalls.

The mystery of the exploding power plant

No you're not alone, I don't know why power plants in Sim City explode after 40 years either. Wouldn't it make more sense to charge us a certain amount of maintainence each year instead? Then never again would you get the dreaded "your power plant will shortly blow up" message when you've just blown all your funds on a brand spanking new airport.

Other power plants that could be included

• Wave power
  Floats in sea/tidal rivers harnessing the power of the waves. Wave power is used in several places around the world already, but is not widespread.
  
  
• Geothermal
  Uses heat from under Earth's crust. Needs to be placed in areas where you don't have to go too far down until you find lava, i.e. near volcanoes. This also already exists but again is not in widespread use.
  
  
• Matter/anti-matter power or Dilithium crystal power
  Okay so it's blatantly ripped out of Star Trek, but it stands to reason that new types of power generation would be invented, so why not? (Cue someone with a Science degree telling me that it's scientifically impossible..)

Contributors: Christoper Chavez, "Andrew", Jeremiah, "Jord", Sir Loco, John Turvaville, asdf.