I started up a new game with Krastorio 2, no other mods installed. I am a little confused as to how to begin playing the game with this mod installed.

I see that I need to research electricity to get small power poles, but I need to power a lab in order to research electricity. Can anyone help me out? The solution is probably obvious, but I have no idea how to find it!

your shelter provides electricity

There are at least 3 different way to get energy at the game start, try to play

I am aware of the ways to get electricity: shelter, broken reactor, wind turbine. However, the problem isn't the electricity itself, it is the poles. I cannot supply electricity to something if I do not have power poles unlocked to do so.

I am going to try a reinstall of factorio and see if that clears anything up

Unfortunately there are still no power poles after a reinstall. Is this a bug or a feature?

This has nothing to do with Krastorio 2.
Power poles are available from the start of the game and Electricity does not have to be researched.

Most likely you are playing the game with AAI Industries installed.

Thanks, Kythblood. I must have installed that one on accident. I don't know what that mod does, but boy would it be annoying to play the whole game without electricity.

(Question resolved)

It is possible, I played a Krastorio 2 + AAI Industry + Space Exploration game a few months ago and everything worked fine, but I can not remember how I got started.

Had the same issue, but I saw that you need to build a burner lab to get electricity before you can use the ship research lab. Using AAI industries + exploration + krastorio