Would it be possible to tweak power loader that when a chunk is loaded, it also includes spawning of mobs? Research indicates there's several fake player mods that keep a chunk loaded in addition to making it possible for mobs to spawn as normal as if player was there. So that tells me it's possible to do same with the power loader. So I thought I'd submit a feature request.

It is certainly possible, but since it generates quite a lot of entity lag, I don't want to include this functionality for free in the chunk loader blocks.

I agree, it shouldn't be included by default.

The apotheosis mod has a spawner module with a solution for this. They required players to apply a nether star to a spawner in order to have it not require player to be present, but still required the chunk to be loaded in order for the spawner to activate.

More detail on how they handled the spawner: https://skyfactory-4.fandom.com/wiki/Apotheosis#Spawners

I did try installing Apotheosis just for the spawner module but unfortunately it didn't work out due to mod conflicts (not with your mod, it was a conflict with a different mod).

Perhaps in order for the spawner to not require the player to be present, perhaps the power loader would need to be "amplified" -- perhaps have it require a crazy high amount of SU to be able to allow entities to load (including spawner), which would be multiplied by the range of chunks being loaded. It would make it quite expensive stress-wise to have that ability, but if one truly wanted it, they could. Due to how expensive it was SU-wise, they wouldn't use that ability too much.

What do you think?

Exactly my issue, one year and one day later lol. Came here to see why my iron farm was not working because I just spent all day yesterday making this chunk loader and the brass version only to come here and see it does not support mob spawning. Oof.