Not to be confused with “galactic powers” from the powerplay update.
Your ships power can be diverted between 3 areas:
You can control the balance what power goes to what system by moving the 6 power “pips” around - in a balanced/reset setting, each system has two pips (i.e. we have a 2:2:2 power ratio - everything is getting an equal share), but you can alter this to provide additional pips to each system, up to a maximum of 6:2:0. For example, you may want to add additional pips to engines to allow your ship to move faster.
Capacitors represent the “reserves” of power available for each area, and are depleted as your ship uses energy. For example firing your weapons or recharging your shields depletes some capacitor power.
Pips indicate how much power is available for each area to recharge its capacitors. More pips means a faster recharge rate. You dont need to have pips in an area to use those systems, for example you could remove all pips from systems once its capacitors are fully charged and your shields will continue to work (until the capacitors are drained) meaning you can dedicate pips to other systems.
If you deplete your capacitor reserves for an area, you'll need to assign pips to it to recharge.
Additionally the number of pips also improves performance slightly: