EOM

you mean the passive energy consumption, right? that would be possible easily.
the charging rate cannot be changed in runtime and i would have to step down a whole entity each research level (i have entities for 5 HP/s, 10,15,25,35...125)
i only could make them reach maximum capacity quicker, it would just drain the same amount of Megawatts over a shorter time
the energy consumption setting can be found under startup (left tab) and requires a restart

I mean passive/active energy consumption.
We already have researches for max shield, recharge rate. Since you introduced new parameter -- might be fun to have it improvable also. You can make it toggle-able for those who feel it too cheaty.

i thought about it a bit and i think it would have no real impact if i added 50 more entities for power consumption.
that way we would have steps of 240 KW (2HP/s) at default setting (x2)
but i don't think i will add a setting to turn this research off.
and it might become a bit expensive.
i'm thinking about:
15% reduction (multiplicative)
L1 = 4 bottles x 200 (85%)
L2 = 6 bottles x 400 (72%)
L3 = 6 bottles x 600 (61%)
L4 = 6 bottles x 800 (52%)
.... infinitely
I think it would be cheaper to build another power plant, most people have at least 2 mods for energy generation anyway

I didn't look into your code implementation. So can't comment on that.

Consumption doesn't matter for main base, because of the point above.

Consumption does (might?) matter for outposts.

Even though many people use energy mods, not all do. (ie: I have only 2 game-changing mods: electric trains and this one. I do not use electric trains per se though.)

i agree that consumption matters for outposts.
i'm doing it like this:
a transformator from the transformator mod to seperate my energy networks, and (pretty expensive) accumulators mk 2 or 3.
when i have a power outage, the laser towers are connected to a seperate loop with the accumulators in them and a power combinator tells my shield combinators that they have to shut down the shields while a speaker notifies me with an icon that the power is off.
anyway i will soon implement the research like i wrote and the other feature you requested.
i could use some feedback on the price and magnitude though