I have always hated how much you are required to research before you get to electric furnaces. Either you make a massive smelting station beforehand to get there faster and then need to tear everything up, or, you keep your coal-based smelting small and slow down to a crawl.

This mod lets you start with the capability of making electric furnaces and the base materials needed for them (advanced circuits, steel, oil and plastics) - you also get a very small bonus early on to help you get there just a little bit faster (12 iron plates, 10 copper, 10 pipes, 10 pipes, 10 gears, 20 small electric circuits, 5 inserters, 10 small electric poles, a steel pick, a machine-gun and some ammo).

Note: Old version (0.1.0) does not include fluid handling - you need some way to destroy heavy and light oil in order to get plastic before researching the technology.