Batteries, Watts, Killojoules, Generators... Confusing units

[Parusoid]

I am trying to manage my circuits but physics gets in the way

Cables, wattage, power stored, watts and killojoules are all making my head dizzy.

Hamster wheel generates 400W, Battery draws 200W and stores up to 40Kj? Why not use the same unit in both cases? 

When my battery is full 40Kj how do I know how much it loses overtime and how much Watts it can give to power other machines?

I shouldn't have cheated on my physics classes in highschool, ugh...

[SnowTS]

Don't hold me to this but I think it's something like this

kilojoules = watts × seconds / 1000

Battery with a 200W per 1 second charge/discharge rate would have a change rate of 0.2 kilojoules per second

40kJ battery discharging at 200W per second would last 200 seconds

I think a cycle is about 600 seconds or 10 minutes at normal speed

[Parusoid]

25 minutes ago, SnowTS said:

Don't hold me to this but I think it's something like this

kilojoules = watts × seconds / 1000

Battery with a 200W per 1 second charge/discharge rate would have a change rate of 0.2 kilojoules per second

40kJ battery discharging at 200W per second would last 200 seconds

I think a cycle is about 600 seconds or 10 minutes at normal speed

That cleared a little bit, but how does it apply to cables?

[SnowTS]

Heavi-watt wire can carry a max of 2.0 kiloWatt per second, or 2000 Watts per second.

If your combined power generation from say 4 coal generators is 2400 watts per second you'll be breaking wires but 3 coal generators with a combined output of 1800 watts second will not cause cables to break.

Also if you have a single generator charging a bank of batteries you can store up a bunch of power then if you connect the battery bank to a number of high drain devices say 3 x liquid tepidizer with a combined power draw of 2880 watts per second they'll also cause the wires to break. In this situation you're not generating to much power to break the wire but you're pulling more than the max wattage the wire can handle from the batteries rather than a generator.

with all that if you're using a number of devices like liquid plumps that stop pumping (and stop drawing power) when their output pipes reach max pressure you can over subscribe their power grid by having more than 2000 watts of devices on a single circuit as long as all the devices aren't running at the same time to break the wires.

[Vilda]

8 hours ago, SnowTS said:

If your combined power generation from say 4 coal generators is 2400 watts per second you'll be breaking wires but 3 coal generators with a combined output of 1800 watts second will not cause cables to break.

No, because it's a power consumption that matters. You can generate how much you want on a circuit. Batteries don't count either.

[Parusoid]

Also i dont understand why parts of the cable are close to overload (yellow) since the machine connected to it are disabled and no energy should flow through hihglighted cables

[Vilda]

Because a circuit is a one entity. It overloads whole or not. My guess is the yellow ones are basic cables and the others are heavy duty.

[Parusoid]

Yes, those are basic. I assumed they energy of whole circuit would not flow to these if they are disabled thats why i put basics there.

 

Also Duplicants most of the time would operater hamster wheel even if the battery charge is not lower than the set threshold. Is thre any way to prevent that?

[Vilda]

24 minutes ago, Parusoid said:

Yes, those are basic. I assumed they energy of whole circuit would not flow to these if they are disabled thats why i put basics there.

You are not first, though I can not understand why would people think so. In real life the energy is the same at the whole circuit (minus loss over distance) unless it is split by some kind of transformator.

27 minutes ago, Parusoid said:

Also Duplicants most of the time would operater hamster wheel even if the battery charge is not lower than the set threshold. Is thre any way to prevent that?

This one is trickier cause there might be some hidden conditions (min max length of running) but the threshold is just for them to start running, they will stay until the battery is full or they have a need (bladder, hunger. sleep)

[Maverick42]

 "Power" is measured in Wattage, or energy "moved" per second.

1 Watt = 1 Joule per Second

1W = 1 J/s

Joule is a unit of energy. So a Watt is a unit of energy generated per second. (Fun fact, Joule was a scientist who studied temperature and how to make thermometers, because heat is also just stored energy)

Hamster wheel generates +400W, or +400 J/s. Coal Generator: +600W

Machines EAT Wattage. Lightbulb eats -10W, or -10 Joules per second. Your common household lightbulb however, is 40 to 60 W.

Batteries EAT Wattage, but do not count in the wattage limit of the wire, even though they are listed as -200W. They will eat 0 to 200 Joules per second and store these Joules, up to 40,000, or 40kJ. This is why they take time to charge. But batteries only eat excess Wattage. If you're powering 40 lightbulbs off your hamster wheel, the battery may appear to spark, but it won't be charging.

Since a battery only eats up to 200W, to charge efficiently and lose as little excess wattage as possible, you will want at least 3 batteries per Coal Generator or 2 batteries per Hamster Wheel. (I don't know off the top of my head what a tiny battery's stats are, or the Hydrogen generator for that matter).

Now then. Batteries have no limit as far as I know to their own power generation, or Wattage, or Joules per second. But they hold up to 40,000 J, so a full battery will power a lightbulb for... 40,000 J divided by 10 J/s = 4,000 seconds.

Batteries lose Joules over time to heat generation, measured in kW I believe. That's for another post though!

Wires in this game are not exactly like pipes. A circuit is all the wires connected to each other. If even a single wire is "low-wattage" then the whole circuit is low-wattage, meaning you will "overload" the circuit if your machines try to consume over 1000W total at any given second. When you look at the electricity overlay, White indicates a healthy circuit, yellow indicates the power draw is approaching/hitting the max, and red indicates the circuit overloaded for a second and will result in broken wires.

You can replace low-wattage wires by simply building high-wattage wires directly on top of them. No need to deconstruct the old wire. Same goes for replacing pipes

Notes:

- Have as many power generators as you desire on a circuit, just make sure to supply the appropriate number of batteries.

- Have at least 3 batteries on a circuit to maximize fuel efficiency, but keep in mind the more batteries, the more loss in heat and the more loss in Wattage to heat. But hey, maybe you want to generate ridiculous amounts of heat?

- A single battery connected to any generator on an inactive circuit will result in wasted Wattage.

- Only use batteries if your machines on a circuit aren't constantly running or if you don't want your dupes to be running on the wheel all the time.

- Hydrogen generators produce the most power, assuming you can supply them with a regular feed of at least 100 grams per second of hydrogen. But the electrolyzer is a fickle beast. Theoretically you might be able to feed one generator per electrolyzer, and switch from coal to water power but I haven't really explored that yet.

 

[Ciderblock]

25 minutes ago, Maverick42 said:

- Hydrogen generators produce the most power, assuming you can supply them with a regular feed of at least 100 grams per second of hydrogen. But the electrolyzer is a fickle beast. Theoretically you might be able to feed one generator per electrolyzer, and switch from coal to water power but I haven't really explored that yet.

 

It's difficult. In theory an electrolyzer and a pump take 360W, which is the minimum to operate a hydrogen generator. That remaining 440W is pretty sweet. But somehow or another you need to lower the pressure on the electrolyzer so that it can run. You can do it "al fresco", but then you need to have your hydrogen separate by height, and then protect your hydrogen generator using either a valve (imperfect and fiddly) or a filter (throws away another 120W). The other way is a sealed "electrolyzer room", but now you need two pumps per electrolyzer and a filter is even more desirable. All four of those things is 720W, so that basically your O2 setup powers itself and that's it.

[Maverick42]

7 minutes ago, Ciderblock said:

It's difficult. In theory an electrolyzer and a pump take 360W, which is the minimum to operate a hydrogen generator. That remaining 440W is pretty sweet. But somehow or another you need to lower the pressure on the electrolyzer so that it can run. You can do it "al fresco", but then you need to have your hydrogen separate by height, and then protect your hydrogen generator using either a valve (imperfect and fiddly) or a filter (throws away another 120W). The other way is a sealed "electrolyzer room", but now you need two pumps per electrolyzer and a filter is even more desirable. All four of those things is 720W, so that basically your O2 setup powers itself and that's it.

My current base just has electrolyzers scattered about, and I pump and filter the air at the top, separating out everything to be sent off to appropriate machines and the oxygen/polluted oxygen to be cooled and recirculated. But yeah, I wish I could run the base on hydrogen power but that's probably not feasible or even necessary.

[Vilda]

2 hours ago, Maverick42 said:

 Batteries lose Joules over time to heat generation, measured in kW I believe. That's for another post though!

No, they don't.

2 hours ago, Maverick42 said:

but keep in mind the more batteries, the more loss in heat and the more loss in Wattage to heat. But hey, maybe you want to generate ridiculous amounts of heat?

No, batteries just produce heat when used, they don't use any energy for that.