Big Boy Power System Help

[Mullematsch]

So I like building big bases. Usually I run into problems with producing & consuming too much power.

I do not like to split my power system even though that is the easiest way to deal with this. 

In my last world, I used a design by Saturnus to put more than 20kw on a wire:

Now I might have set it up wrongly but the problem I ran into is that my cable which had all the generators on it, would take damage because it would exceed the 20kw produced, not consumed. 

So in this beautiful picture, the black cable would often basically say "Produced 30kw (taking overload damage); Consumed 4kw".

Is there a way to have all power producing machinery on one cable without issues or would the best way to handle this to just have two or three generator cables and than each connect to the output with the power switch & battery design like this:

Now based on the thread of which I took the design, I guess the way it would work is that I would have two maximum three "generator cables" and only one output cable since the base should not exceed 100KW. 

Enlighten me with your wisdom people!  

[MustardWarrior]

I'm a little confused I think I see and XOR gate going into a NOT gate and it looks like both the input and the output of the not gate go into an and gate .  

 

I did some testing to use more power on a single wire.  So it should also apply to big wires.  I don't think all of that logic is necessary.  Here is what I would do if I every had your insane power demands.  Look at Martoss' tutorial: 

Look at his battery design.  Think of this as a sub station.  It looks complicated but the only automation is a not gate and smart battery just understand that it has two states and at any given time one of the batteries is being charged and one of the batteries is being discharged.  So use those as power stations if you think about how players intuitively use transformers by having little sub circuits connected to transformers, like that but instead of a transformer you use a switching battery. Oh and an important detail if you did all that and it doesn't seem to be charging fast enough to keep up even though you have enough generators then that means you need to connect more large transformers to the system. all of your generators can be connected on one line and connect all of those to the input side of the transformer and then connect all of the outputs together and connect that to your grid.

[biopon]

Ok first off, generators don't exceed the line capacity. Ever. Second, I am not sure what that design is meant to accomplish but it's way too complicated for what you're trying to do. 

You can use this instead:

Generators (and only generators) are on the 1KW wire. I have about 40KW on this network and it's not overloaded.

Your consumers are on the conductive wires. You can also use heavi if needed. The left battery in each pair is set to 100%/20%.

4 minutes ago, MustardWarrior said:

connect more large transformers to the system

Try not connecting any instead.

[MustardWarrior]

4 minutes ago, biopon said:

Try not connecting any instead.

Yeah I made a mistake, I was thinking too much about my example where the heavy watt wire that connected the generators could handle so much power that you really only had to worry about the output.  So I guess you do have to separate them out.  Into 20kw sub circuit generator stations and connect each of them to a number of transformers and connect those to the grid.

Aren't the transformers responsible for the 4-5 "ticks" per second phenomena that allow you to excede the power limit of the wire.  Wouldn't omitting them negate the benefits of this?

[biopon]

Just now, MustardWarrior said:

So I guess you do have to separate them out.

No you don't HAVE to.

Line load is determined by consumers. If you only have producers and batteries (which don't count as consumers) on a network, you can put as much power into it as you want. This is the whole point of having a pair of batteries permanently split off your consumers from the generators. But I think you get this. This has nothing to do with transformer ticks.

The only time you may want to use transformers is if you don't want to run your generators continuously. In that case create a sub-network on heavi wire, put one battery on it, and use automation to have it turn on the generators at whatever charge level. 0 works I guess. You are limited to 20kw on this network.

Then use one or more transformers (how many depends on how much power you're generating on this subnet) to take power from the local heavi and send it to your backbone (which in my example above is a low-tech 1KW wire). The transformer(s) are seen on the heavi network as consumers (but you don't care because you're using heavi wire) and they're seen as producers on the 1KW wire (but you don't care because production is not limited by line capacity.)

 

[MustardWarrior]

22 minutes ago, biopon said:

No you don't HAVE to.

Line load is determined by consumers. If you only have producers and batteries (which don't count as consumers) on a network, you can put as much power into it as you want. This is the whole point of having a pair of batteries permanently split off your consumers from the generators. But I think you get this. This has nothing to do with transformer ticks.

The only time you may want to use transformers is if you don't want to run your generators continuously. In that case create a sub-network on heavi wire, put one battery on it, and use automation to have it turn on the generators at whatever charge level. 0 works I guess. You are limited to 20kw on this network.

Then use one or more transformers (how many depends on how much power you're generating on this subnet) to take power from the local heavi and send it to your backbone (which in my example above is a low-tech 1KW wire). The transformer(s) are seen on the heavi network as consumers (but you don't care because you're using heavi wire) and they're seen as producers on the 1KW wire (but you don't care because production is not limited by line capacity.)

 

Alright I just tested it and this seems to be true.  However batteries don't charge other batteries so I think the reason the guy who made the tutorial I posted used transformers was so that right near the generator and before the transformer you could have a smart battery to avoid generating more power than you are using.

Alright this is what I came up with I consider the smart battery automation to be necessary.  I didn't hook everything up and test it but all the power stuff is hooked up and you can see how it works.

[MustardWarrior]

Now that I think about it though a 20 kj battery on a 20 kw system might be a bad idea. The battery can only power the stuff for a second and that might end up causing problems so you may need multiple batteries.

[biopon]

I think once you're building 20KW powerplants, you can probably afford to run them continuously, and don't need a battery at all. For smaller early-game powerplants a single battery is fine. I've been using one for about a hundred cycles with 5 natgas gens.

[Mullematsch]

13 hours ago, biopon said:

Ok first off, generators don't exceed the line capacity. Ever. Second, I am not sure what that design is meant to accomplish but it's way too complicated for what you're trying to do. 

Sadly I do not have a save anymore going back to when I had all the issues with circuit overloaded but I kept getting the error until I moved some power of the generator cable to the outputs itself to keep the generator cable below 20kw:

However I just tested it a bit more and now I can't reproduce the issue in my old world so I am not sure what the problem was.

 

I believe the design of Saturnus is just able to send a lot more power through it than some of the linked alternatives here.

You are alternating charging two batteries each so I never had issues with it not being quick enough even going up to consuming ~40kw. 

I need to do some testing on it later, driving me insane that I had those issues for 500 cycles and now I can't reproduce them. 

Might have been related to the way I had my solar connected to the base (using a power switch to enable/disable power exchange between solar battery bank and base) based on energy stored up. 

 

 

[Mullematsch]

Why do I get circuit overload with this design?

[mathmanican]

2 minutes ago, Mullematsch said:

Why do I get circuit overload with this design?

You have a 4kw transformer connected to regular wire.  You are producing 1.6kw with your generators (or more with tune up). The 4kw transformer can pull a full 4kw (from the batteries if needed), but you have everything on a 1kw line.  Change the top line to heaviwatt. 

[Mullematsch]

13 minutes ago, mathmanican said:

You have a 4kw transformer connected to regular wire.  You are producing 1.6kw with your generators (or more with tune up). The 4kw transformer can pull a full 4kw (from the batteries if needed), but you have everything on a 1kw line.  Change the top line to heaviwatt. 

I thought it would work bases on this comment: 

On 2/16/2019 at 8:47 AM, biopon said:

Ok first off, generators don't exceed the line capacity. Ever. Second, I am not sure what that design is meant to accomplish but it's way too complicated for what you're trying to do. 

Generators (and only generators) are on the 1KW wire. I have about 40KW on this network and it's not overloaded.

So basically I can produce 100KW on this network without circuit overload damage but If I had six 4kw transformers active on a heavy watt wire, I would still get circuit overload damage?

How has biopon all his generators on a 1KW wire? Is he not using transformers or am I missing something?

 

Okay, I guess I get it. He is just running all his generators non stop so he has no transformers on his network at all.

Not sure if I like that, seems like you would be wasting a lot of power that way.

Guess I will end up splitting my power network into two or three circuits. 

Maybe you could take the automation of the smart batteries and use that to turn on the generators. That should work... 

[mathmanican]

3 minutes ago, Mullematsch said:

How has biopon all his generators on a 1KW wire? Is he not using transformers or am I missing something?

No transformers, just generators.  You can put 30 steam turbines all on a single 1kw line, provided they never touch more than 1kw of consumers.  I keep all my steam turbines separate from the consumption line, and never turn them off.  To turn coal/natgas generators on/off with a smart battery though, you need to find a way to make sure the battery drains (must be connected to a consumer).  Batteries will not transfer power to other batteries without a transformer to draw the power. There are lots of ways to do this.  One simple option is to use heaviwatt on the generator side, with a transformer to transfer the power to the main 1kw line that connects all power. There are other options (like putting the smart battery that turns the generator on/off onto the consumption side (you'll need a transformer after your smart battery switch), and only turning on the generator when other power sources are not enough to keep the battery full). With a setup like this, you can precisely control which generators turn on first, based on resources at hand.  

 

[Mullematsch]

Appreciate the help.

So would you agree that doing it this way is a decent way of setting it up?

And If the heavy watt cable would get close to above 20kw, you could set up a seperate one like this?

[mathmanican]

7 minutes ago, Mullematsch said:

So would you agree that doing it this way is a decent way of setting it up?

That setup will avoid wire overloads, so it will work. You can connect every power system to the same 1kw grid (the one on the small side of the transformers that feeds into the smart batteries). Decent? Sure. 

This system does suffer from one problem, namely that each power plant will continue to operate regardless of the other plants. Your controller battery does not get any information from the other power plants. To fix this, you need a controller battery on the consumer side. If you can guaranteed that all controller batteries for all plants will loose power at the same rate (and fill from other plants when other plants turn on), then you can set percentages. For example, at 90% turn on Petro,  at 70% turn on NG, at 40% turn on coal, etc.  You can set the percentages at whatever you want, based on resources.  Your current setup will cause each plant to continue filling the same battery forever, which will get drained as quickly as power needs require.

[Mullematsch]

12 minutes ago, mathmanican said:

That setup will avoid wire overloads, so it will work. You can connect every power system to the same 1kw grid (the one on the small side of the transformers that feeds into the smart batteries). Decent? Sure. 

This system does suffer from one problem, namely that each power plant will continue to operate regardless of the other plants. Your controller battery does not get any information from the other power plants. To fix this, you need a controller battery on the consumer side. If you can guaranteed that all controller batteries for all plants will loose power at the same rate (and fill from other plants when other plants turn on), then you can set percentages. For example, at 90% turn on Petro,  at 70% turn on NG, at 40% turn on coal, etc.  You can set the percentages at whatever you want, based on resources.  Your current setup will cause each plant to continue filling the same battery forever, which will get drained as quickly as power needs require.

I am trying to wrap my brain around this but if I use a battery on the consumer side do I not run into the same problem again (needing a transformer & overloading the wire)?

Based on my pictures where exactly would I need to put the battery? Between the 1kw power wire and the battery / power switch setup?

 

 

I might be too stupid to figure this out but could I not just have for example four smart batters on my natural gas power wire with different settings - 90% for nat gas; 70% coal, 50% petroleum or something like that. And just run those automation wires to the other generators on separate power lines?

Since in this example natural gas would be my main power source if it can't keep up I know I need to turn on some of the other power plants!? 

 

 

[Mullematsch]

[mathmanican]

51 minutes ago, Mullematsch said:

Based on my pictures where exactly would I need to put the battery? Between the 1kw power wire and the battery / power switch setup?

You would need to add something to your design. You can't solve this problem without adding something new. Basically, add a station that takes in power from the main line (via a smart battery switch) and then uses a transformer to feed that power to controller batteries. Then use another transformer on this battery line that takes the power away from these batteries and feeds it back to the main line. Here's a rough idea that you can play with, till you find something that works great.  You can alternately build 4 small 1 battery stations (if your power generators are far apart). Just make sure each section has the following:

• (mainline) -> (smart battery switch) ->(transformer) -> (controller battery) -> (transformer) -> (mainline)

 

There are probably other more elegant ways to handle this, but a similar build using these principles has worked for me so far. 

1 hour ago, Mullematsch said:

I might be too stupid to figure this out but could I not just have for example four smart batters on my natural gas power wire with different settings - 90% for nat gas; 70% coal, 50% petroleum or something like that. And just run those automation wires to the other generators on separate power lines?

Since in this example natural gas would be my main power source if it can't keep up I know I need to turn on some of the other power plants!? 

Looks like that works too.

However, if you don't put a transformer to drain those batteries, then you'll have issues. 

[Mullematsch]

20 minutes ago, mathmanican said:

You would need to add something to your design. You can't solve this problem without adding something new. Basically, add a station that takes in power from the main line (via a smart battery switch) and then uses a transformer to feed that power to controller batteries. Then use another transformer on this battery line that takes the power away from these batteries and feeds it back to the main line. Here's a rough idea that you can play with, till you find something that works great.  You can alternately build 4 small 1 battery stations (if your power generators are far apart). Just make sure each section has the following:

• (mainline) -> (smart battery switch) ->(transformer) -> (controller battery) -> (transformer) -> (mainline)

 

There are probably other more elegant ways to handle this, but a similar build using these principles has worked for me so far. 

Let me say again; thank you for the help. This is really interesting, appreciate you enlightening me about this.

So I believe I got it working now and it should be set up in a good way...

Basically want to be able to produce / consume over 20 KW of power while also having generators be controlled by smart batteries:

Sometimes, the output does seem to run out of power. Any idea how to fix that? 

https://youtu.be/6Hb_Q6euxF0

 

[snoozer]

2 hours ago, Mullematsch said:

Sometimes, the output does seem to run out of power. Any idea how to fix that? 

I think you need a bigger transformer (or more), because the SmartBats that control your powerplants might deplete to slow and introduce a bottleneck. Right now they deplete with 500W/s, and while sufficiently loaded they limit your power output to 1kW.

I would replace the 1kW wire around them with a 20kW wire and more/bigger transformers. Making them kick in sooner might help too.

[Mullematsch]

1 hour ago, snoozer said:

I think you need a bigger transformer (or more), because the SmartBats that control your powerplants might deplete to slow and introduce a bottleneck. Right now they deplete with 500W/s, and while sufficiently loaded they limit your power output to 1kW.

I would replace the 1kW wire around them with a 20kW wire and more/bigger transformers. Making them kick in sooner might help too.

I guess replacing it all with a Heavi-Watt Wire is the only way to get the power quickly enough out of the system. If I just add more transformers, I obviously blow out the wire.

I play around with it so more later but at least it is kinda working 

[snoozer]

IMO replacing this part is necessary:

 

[badgamer123]

On 2/16/2019 at 3:45 PM, MustardWarrior said:

I'm a little confused I think I see and XOR gate going into a NOT gate and it looks like both the input and the output of the not gate go into an and gate .  

 

I did some testing to use more power on a single wire.  So it should also apply to big wires.  I don't think all of that logic is necessary.  Here is what I would do if I every had your insane power demands.  Look at Martoss' tutorial: 

 

I was using a lot of the switch battery setup in my base,there is a problem that the shutoff gate sometime bugged (all 4 turn to off while the signal is on or and stuck there until I notice it.Did you guys have the same problem?

[Mullematsch]

12 minutes ago, snoozer said:

IMO replacing this part is necessary:

 

Agreed. But you cannot do that without switching out the wire.

5 minutes ago, badgamer123 said:

I was using a lot of the switch battery setup in my base,there is a problem that the shutoff gate sometime bugged (all 4 turn to off while the signal is on or and stuck there until I notice it.Did you guys have the same problem?

Yes, that is why Saturnus design has switches to reset it:

I guess I will set up my power system like this, should work:

 

After adding a few more batteries, the hydrogen generators aren't turning on at all before they were flickering on/off a lot. 

https://youtu.be/YCg7bVoXgHo

No power overproduction occurring and outputs do not run out of power. 

If the base would eventually consume more than 20kw power, I should be able to copy the design and connect to the 1KW wire going to the smart batteries at the bottom.

[badgamer123]

8 minutes ago, Mullematsch said:

Agreed. But you cannot do that without switching out the wire.

Yes, that is why Saturnus design has switches to reset it:

I guess I will set up my power system like this, should work:

 

 

 

Arr thx I dun know(that post have way too much logic gate)
I might sometime try to pick that up and make it my own.