Superbases and circuits over 20kW

[Smithe37]

Has anyone got any bright ideas or links to a previous forum post around superbases and power systems that consume over 20kW?
I understand that splitting the system up into smaller circuits with their own power supply is an option.

Anyone have any smart ways to keep it centralized without spiking over 20kW occasionally and damaging the circuit?

[JackOverkill]

2 lines of heavy wires

[Tonyroid]

You are in luck. I made a video on that subject a couple days ago showing one popular strategy in a (hopefully) easy to understand way. It has some weaknesses, like: Prioritizing which generators get used first can be an issue.

Other strategies are out there, but I've never seen anything else for keeping stuff centralized that was at all satisfying to me as a solution.

 

[KittenIsAGeek]

My strategy is to use transformers to isolate grids in manageable sizes.  For example, you can have sets of generators on individual grids that feed in to the same "working" grids so that power gets used from, for example, solar first and hydrogen last.  

[miauly]

1 hour ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

for example, solar first and hydrogen last.

May I ask you to explain how to do that or show an example, please? I tried to achieve this with smart batteries and failed to.

[Rebrait]

 

4 hours ago, miauly said:

May I ask you to explain how to do that or show an example, please? I tried to achieve this with smart batteries and failed to.

in my save I leave all the energy generated together in high cables, each generator has a control battery connected in that cable (except the solar that is connected directly), What controls which group of generators will work is the minimum of the battery, if you put natural gas in 80/100 and the hydrogen in 70/100, the hydrogen will only be used if the solar + natural gas does not supply the demand and the batteries are being used

[miauly]

58 minutes ago, Rebrait said:

each generator has a control battery connected in that cable (except the solar that is connected directly)

I think I am missing something here because I was trying similar settings on different batteries, but they were drained and charged seemingly together without any particular order. Maybe it has to do with the way you join cables to the transformers/consumers? 

[Rebrait]

3 hours ago, miauly said:

I think I am missing something here because I was trying similar settings on different batteries, but they were drained and charged seemingly together without any particular order. Maybe it has to do with the way you join cables to the transformers/consumers? 

All batteries are drained at the same time, as long as they are all connected in the same "wire" without transformers between them.
the automation turns on the generators when it reaches the minimum set in the "control" battery, so if you set a minimum for each type of generator it will only work if the production is less than the consumption, causing the battery level to decrease to the set in the other control battery

[KittenIsAGeek]

9 hours ago, miauly said:

May I ask you to explain how to do that or show an example, please? I tried to achieve this with smart batteries and failed to.

OK, lets see what I can do to help you out.

4 hours ago, miauly said:

I think I am missing something here because I was trying similar settings on different batteries, but they were drained and charged seemingly together without any particular order. Maybe it has to do with the way you join cables to the transformers/consumers? 

It all has to do with setting the priorities.  

 IMPORTANT NOTE:  Because I threw this together quickly, I did not put any smart batteries to turn the nat gas generators off.  This means that in this particular setup, the nat gas generators will run continually provided there is fuel.  You should ALWAYS control your fossil fuel generators with smart batteries.  This example is to showcase connecting various grids together and is not meant to show how to run your generators.  You have been warned.

 

OK, here's an example setup.  This can be scaled up or down as necessary. 

Spoiler

 

Alright, so.. here's what we've got.  Up top are the solar panels. You can have a lot, or a few, doesn't matter. What matters is that your total power per set is less than 20kw AND that you have one big transformer for every 5kw of potentially generated power.  Since they max out at 380 watts ecah, that means you can have 13 panels per large transformer and 52 panels per group.  This same rule applies to other power sources as well. Anyway, on to the priority.  The smart battery on the "Load" side of the transformer is basically acting as a load sensor. 

For the panels, you want them on as much as possible.  So their transformer goes active any time the power load drops below 91 percent and stays active until the battery is fully charged.   You can also put a ton of regular batteries on the panel side of the transformer to store up excess power when the grid isn't using it -- up to you.  The point here is that your panels will be active pretty much all the time.  you could even eliminate the smart battery here (if you're not going to put any batteries on the 'panel' side of the transformer). Note: You do NOT want to set the smart battery to 100/100.  You'll lose a LOT of power. If you're going to do it that way, just remove the smart battery completely.

Next we have some dupe power.  In this case I've put down six hamster wheels, which comes out to exactly 2kw of potential power. I used conductive wire (regular will burn out) so the dupes won't be disgusted by unsightly heavi-watt wire while they're working out.  This room can be in your nice clean base, or anywhere really.  I'm using two small transformers to show how to connect the transformers together to move more power across a grid.  Each small transformer handles 1kw, so two of them together will take the full 2kw.

In my case, I want the dupes on the wheels more than I want my fossil fuels to run, so I've set their transformers to turn on when the available power drops below 75%, but to turn off when the solar panels are providing enough power.

Finally, we have our nat gas gens. Or petroleum gens. Or hydrogen. Whatever, the point is that these are the ones that provide the most power, but you also don't want them running all the time (or, really, as little as possible).

The smart battery here goes on standby at 90, like with the hamster wheels, but it doesn't go active until the battery is below 40%.  This means that it will kick in last, but will stay active until only the solar panels are providing the power.  You could set the 'standby' threshold lower, to say 80%, but if you have it set the same as your hamster wheels, then your dupes will get kicked off the wheels  long enough to see if there's other tasks they ought to be doing.  

Finally, we need to connect your high-power grid to other grids.  Lets say you've got a 10kw grid running to a heavy machinery part of your base, where you've got some aquatuners, smelters, etc.  They can be connected individually through transformers, or they could be on the grid.  It doesn't matter where the load goes -- what matters is how you connect it to the power sources.

The upper left is the line that all of our power is being dumped into by our generators.  On the right is our 10kw line out to the consumers.  You don't need to turn these transformers on and off -- in fact its best if you just leave them on all the time.  You will never pull more than 10kw, so if you have, say, 100 refrigerators connected to it, only 83 or 84 will run at any given moment.  You can even connect additional transformers from this line to smaller sets of consumers.

Spoiler

I apologize,  ran out of space near the bottom, but you get the idea.

Anyway, using the concepts here you can set up some large-scale energy distribution networks.  You can connect your power generators to multiple grids in the same way -- your nat gas generators, for example, could be connected to three different high power networks.   Transformers can be used to limit the power that goes in to any network from another, basically isolating it.  Smart batteries can be used to turn the transformers on and off, allowing you to prioritize power generation.  

While you can do very similar things with Power Shutoffs, the transformer is quick and easy and allows power to flow in only one direction.  Instead of trying to remember what way to connect the switches for a switched-mode battery supply, all you have to remember is that "power flows from high to low."

[miauly]

Thank you for such detailed guide, @KittenIsAGeek . I was not aware that transformers can be joined like that, more than one. I think now that the point I was missing with smart batteries is that I needed to get batteries to the same amount of power to even them out, and then from that point they would be always even, and so the sliders will set the priority indeed. I never noticed that batteries are drained evenly, no matter what their position on the grid.

Interesting thing also is that ONI wiki contains a tip that is directly consequential to that fact, but not the fact itself. I've added one more note there in wiki and linked your guide there, hope you don't mind? https://oxygennotincluded.gamepedia.com/Smart_Battery#Notes

I think there are a lot of details of mechanics that are really useful to know but nowhere to be found unless you are very attentive. Like, for example, bridges altering the flow - the part of getting input priority is there but I think there's also something about output as well. Maybe I will eventually dedicate some time to gather info on pipes and bridges on the forum, test it and try to arrange in the wiki, but this better be done by someone with a good understanding of it in the first place.

[KittenIsAGeek]

Just now, miauly said:

I needed to get batteries to the same amount of power to even them out, and then from that point they would be always even, and so the sliders will set the priority indeed. I never noticed that batteries are drained evenly, no matter what their position on the grid.

Sometimes when you add a new smart battery it will be out of sync with the other batteries.  I haven't found a good method of reliably getting them synchronized other than letting them all run to zero, or to let them all run full.  Generally they end up getting synchronized eventually, but it can be annoying.

15 minutes ago, miauly said:

Interesting thing also is that ONI wiki contains a tip that is directly consequential to that fact, but not the fact itself. I've added one more note there in wiki and linked your guide there, hope you don't mind? https://oxygennotincluded.gamepedia.com/Smart_Battery#Notes

Cool.

[PhailRaptor]

1 hour ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

 IMPORTANT NOTE:  Because I threw this together quickly, I did not put any smart batteries to turn the nat gas generators off.  This means that in this particular setup, the nat gas generators will run continually provided there is fuel.  You should ALWAYS control your fossil fuel generators with smart batteries.  This example is to showcase connecting various grids together and is not meant to show how to run your generators.  You have been warned.

While I would agree that this is the ultimate goal for ensured sustainability of the base, this seems, to me, to be a little heavy-handed of a statement.  You can have your limited resources (fossil fuels, as you put it) run as often as they can, as long as the rate of consumption is lower than the rate of acquisition.

NatGas in particular is actually quite beneficial to run continuously.  You are guaranteed at least 1 NatGas Geyser on your map, and on average can have (depending on seed) 2 more.  And running them produces P-H2O, a resource that most people can't get enough of.

If you are using PetroGens, the same thing happens, though it's more efficient to boil your Petro to NatGas if you're using it for power, which in turn just goes right back to the NatGas Gens.

[KittenIsAGeek]

3 minutes ago, PhailRaptor said:

While I would agree that this is the ultimate goal for ensured sustainability of the base, this seems, to me, to be a little heavy-handed of a statement.  You can have your limited resources (fossil fuels, as you put it) run as often as they can, as long as the rate of consumption is lower than the rate of acquisition.

NatGas in particular is actually quite beneficial to run continuously.  You are guaranteed at least 1 NatGas Geyser on your map, and on average can have (depending on seed) 2 more.  And running them produces P-H2O, a resource that most people can't get enough of.

If you are using PetroGens, the same thing happens, though it's more efficient to boil your Petro to NatGas if you're using it for power, which in turn just goes right back to the NatGas Gens.

I agree.  My statement was making a multitude of assumptions that may or may not be valid for any particular player.

[helight59]

On 21.05.2019 at 8:44 AM, Tonyroid said:

You are in luck. I made a video on that subject a couple days ago showing one popular strategy in a (hopefully) easy to understand way. It has some weaknesses, like: Prioritizing which generators get used first can be an issue.

Other strategies are out there, but I've never seen anything else for keeping stuff centralized that was at all satisfying to me as a solution.

 

more compact construction