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For the record.
The station is absurdly self sufficient. With basically 0 work done making sure power systems are operation, it will last about 10 hours.
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Shouldn't it last infinitely? The solars produce more power than the station is capable of consuming, even with everything turned on in their most power-intensive modes. Unless the solars code bugs out after a while, station power should last forever under the current setup. Right now, not just the engine but the entire power grid (and all the tools and functions that go along with it) is essentially pointless
Fixing that, though, is as simple as dropping the solars' total combined output to a maximum of, uh, maybe 120 kW, with periods of time where they're producing less. If people are going to be big babies about not wanting to set up the engine, then they should at least have to mind their power consumption if they don't.
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Without touching anything the SMES aren't configured optimally to charge when the solars have too much power or too little, and the solars don't always grant peak power.
Between the two, and the fact that station energy can spike, I think 10 hours is a reasonable estimate if you literally perform no work on the power grid.
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The solars provide something like 180 kW, while station power consumption is rarely higher than 120 kW. The SMESes don't even matter; the station grid always has enough power to charge them along with every APC on the station.
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Giving a boost to telescience should enable you to detect foreign zlevels.
Like maybe it spits out a possible unconfigured coordinate of the zlevels location.
Essentially a supercharged ping.