Unknown up to this point... needs a better way or more detailed implementation...
I thought about your previous comment about powering rails when you're at your home station... in that case, it would sit in automatic mode, I don't see why you would put it in manual when it's just sitting idle in your base. So deploying it when it is stopped in manual mode isn't that bad... It could only power entities near itself anyway, and it won't connect to other power poles either, so that's no issue either.