Power grid help

[Sliceofpow]

I need help with my power grid while conserving refined metal. Is there a way to distribute power from a central location without expending all of the refined metal?

Perhaps staggering circuits with 1000w transformers off of main power grid? My earlier attempts lead to circuit overload.

How do you distribute power?

 

[WanderingKid]

I use Heavi-Watt trunk lines and then hook transformers off them.  I use them in large quantity, too.

[fishoutofwater]

this one guide

 

[Sheo]

Using heavy watt wires only in my power plant, 1k wires to any consumer station, there I‘m using also 1k wires or 2k wires for heavy machines. no downs so far, powering space bunkers, metal refinery aso.

[ONIfreak]

2 hours ago, Sheo said:

Using heavy watt wires only in my power plant, 1k wires to any consumer station, there I‘m using also 1k wires or 2k wires for heavy machines. no downs so far, powering space bunkers, metal refinery aso.

Two small transformers from main grid and conductive cable should do the trick.

[Sliceofpow]

Is there a way to distribute power without a massive line of ugly heavi wire?

[Sasza22]

11 minutes ago, Sliceofpow said:

Is there a way to distribute power without a massive line of ugly heavi wire?

The alternative is either building multiple conductive wires everywhere or building a generator near each power consumer. Both are more complicated designs but will let you avoid using heavi wires.

[ONIfreak]

1 hour ago, Sasza22 said:

The alternative is either building multiple conductive wires everywhere or building a generator near each power consumer. Both are more complicated designs but will let you avoid using heavi wires.

Or try to build your power distributors on one side of the map. Take cable to multiple transformators with mix conductive and normal wire and distribute normal wires from there. Split map for sectors ( approximately) between all transformators and distribute 1 wire per sector. Use abbysilote on map to dicide by sectors and make sure ypu "enter" one sector more or less pn the same place - easier after to check how busy every sector is. Ypu can after split dupes to work on partocular sectors

[beowulf2010]

4 hours ago, Sliceofpow said:

Is there a way to distribute power without a massive line of ugly heavi wire?

What I do is have a separate smaller shaft where the heavy watt line is run. Anywhere this needs to cross actual dupe areas, I convert it to the conductive heavy wires and then go back to normal heavy watt once I'm past the dupe area. I then have a series of rooms between the main dupe travel shaft and this utility shaft where I put the transformer/smart battery units to feed power via normal or conductive wiring as demands demand. Works really well for me. 

[bummins]

The Electricity tutorial is quite complex, if you want a simple layout and simple setup see the images below where the batteries are charged with simple low wattage wire from a transformer. 

 

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Sliceofpow]

Bummins your design solved my ugly heavi watt problem  Only my Bank has the heavi

[Craigjw]

On 29/12/2018 at 5:06 PM, Sliceofpow said:

Is there a way to distribute power without a massive line of ugly heavi wire?

Yes, you could build pretty heavi conductive wire, it's no more conductive than heavi wire BUT is just prettier...

[ChickenMadness]

Literally build loads of power transformers on top of each other in a tower.

Then pull the wires out where you need them to go. Just use small transformers if you want to use cheap wires.

This is what I usually build on the side of my base. You can make it much simpler than this, I just like filling the gaps with water because it looks pretty, and will stop them overheating. And I wall it off from the main base because of the negative decor values of heavy watt wire.

But the way I hooked up the heavy watt wire and walls makes it so you can pull wires out without having to build any wire bridges. Makes it less confusing when you start sending wires in loads of different directions.

It's like having a bunch of extra wire sockets on the wall of your house that you can use as needed. Theres a bunch of extra unused heavy watt wire plugs on the outer edge that could be attached to different power plants etc.

 

 

 

Can take the small wires outside without having to build any wire bridges too. Been building this on multiple colonies I find it really organised and flexible. I just delete and rebuild wires as needed as my base grows.

The main heavy watt line goes through the middle of the base all the way to the other side where theres an identical tower and loads of other industrial stuff. It's hidden by the water reservoir which is where the majority of piping, transit tubes and conveyor belts run through for temperature control and keeping the negative decor out of the base. Also because it's tidy and looks pretty lol.

 

 

 

[cblack]

What I do for power is pool all (and I do mean all) power sources into a battery bank, and the battery bank is the only place I run heavy-watt wire. I then split the power out, on several different circuits, and if the stored power ever starts to get low, circuits will drop according to their priority.  First to be disabled is the low priority circuit, followed by the medium, then high, and then critical.  In my current setup, I've never had more than the lowest priority go offline, but that's because I've not yet needed to run a bunch of aqua tuners.

Pooling the power this way has the added benefit of being able to control your power generation very carefully as well.  For instance, if my solar panels are producing enough power, my hydrogen and natural gas generators shut off (well, with some exceptions for one of the hydrogen generators).  Anyway, to do this, you need transformers.  Here's a look at my setup, which contains literally all of the heavy-watt wire in my entire game:

The generator circuits all enter on the left, and are split by type.  I've got all my solar panels on one circuit, 2x natural gas on another, 2x hydrogen generators on a third, and the coal generators you see in the screenshot as a last resort.  The smart battery count is equal to the number of different thresholds I need to set; each one has a separate automation circuit attached to it.  I would probably do better by adding a few more smart batteries to the circuit, but to precisely balance the number of batteries you have (which lose power over time) with added capacity (to avoid curtailment of solar power) is non-trivial.

Output circuits are all on the right, and with four of them I can pull a maximum of 8KW, though I rarely pull more than 3KW at a time.  You may need more transformers and circuits depending on your needs and your wire.  As for the automation, there are a few things you should keep in mind:

• Do not switch the transformers themselves off to turn off a circuit.  Doing so will cause the 4KJ they are storing to vanish!  Instead, use an automated switch (like you can see in the image) to turn off a circuit when the power gets too low.
• For power generated from resources (e.g. hydrogen, natural gas), make sure they turn off before the batteries reach 100% (I turn them on at 95% and stop them at 98%, but could probably lower it if I didn't care as much about the low priority circuit being up).  This lets your solar panels work more efficiently, and if you don't want them to power low-priority circuits, you can simply stop them before they reach the cutoff threshold for the low-priority circuit.
• You can share a single circuit with multiple machines that draw high wattage.  What I do is put pressure switches below where the duplicants stand when they operate them.  A duplicant standing on one switch disables the other machines, so that only one can be active at a time.  Just make sure the machines are in an area that duplicants won't walk through when doing other chores, or it'll either interrupt other duplicants while they're working or require some fancy circuitry.
• Your most critical circuit should only be used for bootstrapping the things required to power the generators themselves, e.g. bunker doors/robo-miners for solar panels, gas pumps for natural gas/hydrogen, etc.  Things that draw a lot of power, like the metal refinery, should be on your low priority circuit.

I'm using refined metal (i.e. conductive) wire for the leads in/out, but there's no reason you couldn't do the same with standard wire.  You'd only want to swap out the transformers as you don't need the big ones, and you'll be more limited on how much power you can put on a circuit obviously.

Lastly keep in mind there is a bug with the hamster wheels that causes them to produce both more power than they should, as well as power when they shouldn't.

[babba]

On 12/29/2018 at 2:46 AM, Sliceofpow said:

I need help with my power grid while conserving refined metal. Is there a way to distribute power from a central location without expending all of the refined metal?

Perhaps staggering circuits with 1000w transformers off of main power grid? My earlier attempts lead to circuit overload.

How do you distribute power?

 

 

Perhaps it would help if we had power transfer via mind teleportation in the game. The pills for that would be available to the player in the great pharmacy of Doctor Bob.

Below: Doctor Bobs fresh washed T-Shirt for the long-awaited doctor job profession in ONi.

Having Dr.Spongemedibob in your colony also could give a power surplus bonus of 99,666 % to give you the upper pizza cheezy crust on your power network.

Dr. Bob on NewYears EvE Vacation in Porto Cruz

Colony idea: "BobSponge 7800 MegaAmperePowerBank"

[fishoutofwater]

@cblackmay I ask for your save file please? I can't understand english well enough, let alone electrical terms.

[cblack]

16 hours ago, fishoutofwater said:

@cblackmay I ask for your save file please? I can't understand english well enough, let alone electrical terms.

I just created a new save last night, overwriting the original, as things were starting to slow way down when saving.  I suspect it was due to having nearly 100Kt of regolith lying around, so this time I'm going to change how I deal with meteors to avoid having so much lying on the ground.

Anyway, I haven't recreated my power system in the new game yet.  But, if it would help, I can create it again in a sandbox game and upload that if you'd like.

[ChickenMadness]

18 hours ago, cblack said:

I just created a new save last night, overwriting the original, as things were starting to slow way down when saving.  I suspect it was due to having nearly 100Kt of regolith lying around, so this time I'm going to change how I deal with meteors to avoid having so much lying on the ground.

Anyway, I haven't recreated my power system in the new game yet.  But, if it would help, I can create it again in a sandbox game and upload that if you'd like.

I would also like to see the save file. I like how organised and tidy your design looks.