https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1090069230633898064/1108884878361104515/image.png
I doubt the "Oil rig infinite power generator" was meant to ever be part of the energy grid.

It isn't, but also we couldn't find a sensible way of preventing it, so congratulations, you found a load of free energy :) If you want your game to continue to be balanced, don't place substations next to oil rigs.

Or any other power pole with a supply area greater than the power pole's collision box for that matter.

Or any other power pole with a supply area greater than the power pole's collision box for that matter.

In vanilla, at least, neither the small nor medium poles have a supply area great enough to reach the centre of the oil rig, so this exploit can only be done with a substation.

Oh man, I just loaded up my Space Exploration save and found this bug. What caused the change? I've had a substation next to my power rigs since a year and a half ago. Only now after coming back to the game and updating to the latest version, this bug cropped up.

May I suggest making it function something similar to the space exploration fluid isothermic generator? Make it consume a small amount of oil, to generate up to some arbitrary, but small value, if it's just intended to drive pumps? Say, like 1MW or something, if it's not supposed to do anything besides running a pump, which only draw 30kw each. However, if you don't want to do that, and keep the creative generator entity, couldn't you at least drop the power production to like 400kw or something small, enough to run the rig, as well as the pumps, without being significant enough to be abuseable.

drop the power production to like 400kw or something small, enough to run the rig, as well as the pumps, without being significant enough to be abuseable.

The problem this change was trying to solve was if someone comes along and drops two Speed-9 modules into the oil rig, the "pumpjack" entity will consume massive amounts of power and previously would be throttled by the limited onboard capacity (and actually pump slower than without the modules). This is one way to do that--the oil rig will continue functioning and modules will have their intended effect. Other options are B) use a smaller generator like you said, and module-users will have to supply external power, or C) remove the module slots altogether.

The problem this change was trying to solve was if someone comes along and drops two Speed-9 modules into the oil rig, the "pumpjack" entity will consume massive amounts of power and previously would be throttled by the limited onboard capacity (and actually pump slower than without the modules). This is one way to do that--the oil rig will continue functioning and modules will have their intended effect. Other options are B) use a smaller generator like you said, and module-users will have to supply external power, or C) remove the module slots altogether.

Don't forget the option of letting it consume oil for whatever amount of power is needed! That could be an intriguing way to deal with the issue, or add some kind of 'waterborne substation'. I feel this latter suggestion would be by far the best option: just use the power systems in place, and add a water-substation.

Or even making the water based long distance power poles have the same supply area as the land based ones. (one tile from their collision hit box.)

And this could be a setting, where either you have these overpowered one tile entities to allow for any power hungry module, or make us have to provide that additional required power using some form of water based power distribution poles (or using landfill to place a land based pole)

It bugged me enough I created a small tweak mod for it:
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/cargo-ships-nofreepower

Still hope something like it will be mainlined

A comprehensive fix for this is in the works :)

Release 0.2.3 has added a startup setting to select the oil rig power source.