Nine times out of ten it's not broken — it's placed wrong. The wheel has to physically sit in the water, in a river with actual current. Here's the exact fix, plus power output and wiring.
Run these in order. The first one is the mistake almost everyone makes, and no amount of rewiring fixes it.
The wheel itself has to be in the water. Not the stand, not the foundation — the actual spinning wheel. If your foundation holds it above the surface, it will never turn. Drop the foundation a level, or place it on a deeper spot, until the wheel's blades dip into the water.
It needs flowing water — a river current. A still pond, a lake, or a dead-calm ocean corner has no flow, so a fully submerged wheel still won't spin. Put it in a river where you can see the water moving.
Face it parallel to the current. The wheel has to be lined up along the flow, not across it. A perpendicular wheel gets no push and sits dead.
Give it clearance. If a wall or building piece is blocking the current from reaching the wheel, output collapses from ~30W to about 1W. Keep a couple of tiles clear between the wheel and the open water.
📷 Screenshot coming for this:
| Passive output | ~30W from a good river current |
| Manual output | Up to ~60W — climb inside and run it like a hamster wheel |
| Ocean | Works, but wobbles with the tides — rivers are steadier |
It's a power source, so it goes at the front of the circuit. Run the wheel's output into a battery to store the charge, then the battery's output into your grid. Without a battery you only get power while you're standing near it, so wire one in.
| Cost | 500 wood · 2 gears · 1 sheet metal |
| Tier | Low — cheap enough to be an early hydro option ⚠ verify WB tier on your build |
Dirt cheap for what it does — a couple of gears and some scrap sheet metal gets you a renewable power source that never runs out of fuel, as long as the river keeps flowing.
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