It's probably because of other mods, but the fact you can't disable this feature means the mod is basically unusable unless I painstakingly go through every other mod. Is there an override command I can do somehow, or another workaround?

Found a work-around for those struggling with the same:

/c game.player.force.technologies["ei_steam-age"].enabled = true

values can be ei_steam-age, ei_electricity-age, ei_computer-age, ei_quantum-age, ei_exotic-age

Thanks! I was taking a look at this mod in the the Editor Extensions scenario and felt like I was losing my marbles because I couldn't find basic iron pipes.