I find the power report confusing

[Gus Smedstad]

Here’s a typical report from my base on cycle 1229:

Power added: 6370 KJ. Used: 10723 Kj. Net: -4353 KJ.

This would make sense if I were running on battery power for much of the day, but the “net” figure is always negative. Further, while the “power added” figure has a breakdown by generator type, the total is at odds with my moment-to-moment power usage.

Since there are 600 seconds in the cycle, 10723 Kj corresponds to an average usage of 17.8 kW this cycle. This seems to fit with the displays I see on my main power backbones. My power net is split into 3 sub nets, because I was frequently exceeding 20kW, so I don’t have a convenient single wire that I can check. 6370 KJ would only be 10.5 kW. Since my 3 subnets currently read 5.7 kW, 2.5 kW, and 4.9 kW, for a total of 13 kW, I’m pretty sure the “total usage” figure is the correct one (power usage spikes when various aquatuners come on line).

I’m assuming the proportions give for power generation are correct, even if the total is wrong. So if the cycle 1200 report says 4,351 kJ of 10,120 kJ generated was petrol, I did generate 43% of my power from petrol. That cycle my usage was 13,032 used and 936 kJ wasted (I was running generators just for the water output), so my actual petrol generation was 13,968 kJ * 43% = 6006 kJ, or 10 kW. That’s consistent with running 3 generators constantly (6 kW) and 2 boosted generators (another 6kW) only on demand, controlled by a smart battery.

[mathmanican]

I have even weirder power reports.  No power created on any cycle after 11, but power gets consumed every cycle afterwards. 

Of course, I know exactly why my report looks like this. I intentionally use the infinite power loop (draw power from a drained battery).  If any battery, anywhere in your base, ever runs dry and is connected to a transformer, then this bug comes into play.

Got a screen shot of your base, or a save I could look at.  I am going to bet that somewhere in your base you are enabling the infinite power loop, unintentionally (that's really easy to have happen). I've played with the bug a ton, on purpose, so I can see where and when it happens. My real hope is that by making this much more known, how to recognize it, how to replicate it, etc., the devs will need to take action. 

From the sounds of it, this might just be a bug with the report not correctly counting the energy produced.  But you never know.  Definitely sounds like a bug, but reporting it without being able to reproduce it makes for a hard bug to track down, and adds to the sheer huge volume of unresolved bug reports.   

I linked this post to the bug report on infinite power.  If it's not related, then we should start a new bug report.

 

[WanderingKid]

I just added a post to the suggestions forum, feel free to tack on to it if you like.  I typically use single-trunk so I don't see the same confusion you guys do on the Power Usage side.

 

[Gus Smedstad]

It’s not related to the number of power sub nets. I had the same issue back when I had a single power network, where all my generators fed a single Heavi Watt line, and that fed transformers for local power nets.