Can I transfer more power with 4 transformers/2wires?

[cranphin]

Hi!

I figured the following made sense:

Have one heavy watt wire, go into two transformers, that each have a separate regular wire, that each ends up in it's own transformer, and the outputs of those two transformers are combined in one heavy watt wire again.

I expected to be able to transfer more power with multiple regular wires that way (for > 1k consumers), but so far I still get overloads.
I'm guessing the game decides to move all the power over one of the wires, or something along those lines.

Can anyone confirm that? Is there a tricky way to make this work?

Looking for this issue I've found the switching battery tricks that use just one wire as an alternative, but I'm still interested to know if my idea could work

Thanks!

 

[ONIfreak]

Put smart battery after transformer and make conductive wire after - this qay it will drain battery on 2k wire and charge battery on 1k. Also i have connected 14 transformers ( small ones) connected. The reason you wire gets overload is because this cable js connected on transformer i guess.

[Saturnus]

Wires in ONI are based on the weakest link principle. All wires on the same network should be the same type, and that type is the maximum power it can transfer. All wires connected directly together are one network. So the two regular wires connecting to one transformer are connected together at the transformer, and therefore is just one network that can hold up to 1000W.

Essentially what you're saying corresponds to taking two normal power outlets in your house with flimsy wires, connecting it together, and somehow expect it to run a 10KW hydraulic press. (Disclaimer: don't try this at home).

[LucidFugue]

Chaining transformers like that won't work. The most straightforward power management is to go:

HWW: Heavy Watt Wire

SB: Smart Battery

ST: Small Transformer

Generator(s) -> HWW -> SB-> HWW -> ST -> wire -> Consumers

When you want to expand your grid, just add on another ST -> wire and keep it isolated from the others. 

If and when you want to go over 1kW in a single line, you need to move up to conductive wire. Then it looks like this:

Generator(s) -> HWW -> SB-> HWW -> 2xST -> Cwire-> Consumers

Link both small transformers to the one wire, as each small transformer limits the power to 1kW. That guarantees a maximum 2kW on the line. 

As ONIfreak stated, it's also good practice to throw in a Smart Battery after the transformer, as transformers generate heat and bleed power when they are turned on. So finally you get to: 

Generator(s) -> HWW -> SB-> HWW -> 2xST -> Cwire-> SB -> Consumers

Automation wires go between Generator and Smart Battery 1, then between the 2x Small Transformers and Smart Battery 2. 

This allows you to freely add generators on the Heavy Watt Wire to increase your overall capacity, and to expand your grid by adding small transformer groups. 

[Mutineer]

There is a way to transfer an unexpected amount of power try single wire, but it is rather complex. Idea is, wire only takes into account what is currently on the grid. For that, you need to charge 2-3 batteries (Or a group of batteries) one at time.
HWW- Heavy wat wire.

HWW - transformator - wire - Power 3* ( shut off -HWW- Battery- HWW - Shutoff) - HWW
 

Idea is, you recharge one battery (Which is cut off by shat off) at a time when other 2 provide power and cut off from your transformator line by shat off. In this case, your week wire is never on the same circle as HWW.

[KittenIsAGeek]

4 hours ago, cranphin said:

Hi!

I figured the following made sense:

Have one heavy watt wire, go into two transformers, that each have a separate regular wire, that each ends up in it's own transformer, and the outputs of those two transformers are combined in one heavy watt wire again.

I expected to be able to transfer more power with multiple regular wires that way (for > 1k consumers), but so far I still get overloads.
I'm guessing the game decides to move all the power over one of the wires, or something along those lines.

Can anyone confirm that? Is there a tricky way to make this work?

Looking for this issue I've found the switching battery tricks that use just one wire as an alternative, but I'm still interested to know if my idea could work

Thanks!

 

Two wires will only transfer twice the power if they're not connected to each other. For example:

Two small transformers on one conductive wire will let you have 2kw of consumers with no problems.  You can double this to have 4kw of consumers, provided each of the conductive wire networks aren't connected to more than two small transformers.  If you do, then both networks will see all 4kw of consumers and since the conductive wire can only handle 2k, it burns out.

However, you can skirt around this problem by using a switched battery system.  On the one side, transformers feed power into a pair of batteries that are set up such that only one is connected to the power source at a time.  The battery that isn't connected to the power grid connected to your secondary grid either through a backwards transformer or directly.  Logic switches the batteries back and forth, and you can use this mechanic to transfer a lot more power than your conductive wire can normally handle.

The way that I generally do things in my base is that I have a small transformer that connects using regular wire to multiple consumers that shouldn't ever exceed 1kw in total power use.  Usually the most I have on a single line is somewhere around 2kw of total consumers, provided that most are either rarely active, or intermittently active.  If I'm running something more powerful, such as an aquatuner, then I'll use conductive wire.  As an example, my oxygen production supply runs on a single regular wire:

Spoiler

Not pictured, but on the same circuit: Pump feeding the electrolyzers.  The cooling loop's aquatuner is on its own separate circuit.

As the average draw is only 720 watts, a single transformer will run this with no problems.  However, there is the rare possibility that all three gas pumps, both electrolyzers, and the water pump feeding the electrolyzers will run simultaneously, putting the total draw at 1080 watts, at which case either you'll get a hot wire (needs repair, but still works) or you'll get one device complaining that there's not enough power.  In 300 cycles, I never had to repair anything.  

Spoiler

(Yes, you can make this system power itself and have plenty of hydrogen left over, but I tend to hoard my hydrogen for use in rocketry).

 

[nakomaru]

2 hours ago, LucidFugue said:

transformers generate heat and bleed power

Heat yes. Power, no. Batteries have both downsides though.

2 hours ago, LucidFugue said:

Automation wires go between Generator and Smart Battery 1, then between the 2x Small Transformers and Smart Battery 2.

This design will destroy 2000J every time SB2 is charged.

If you want to make this design work without destroying 2000J on every charge, use a shutoff behind the transformers. You can set SB2 to output red above 90% to consume the remaining 2000J.

(Of course, switching smart batteries is the better design.)

[LucidFugue]

Ohhh, I always thought the 2000J was destroyed when it didn't have a battery to go into, but the trigger is actually shutting down the transformer itself rather than letting it bleed into the battery? 

There's always something more to learn! But why is switching batteries the better design? It seems like it has cases where it can save materials if you're creating a power substation (say, if your generator room is to the west side of your base, but you want to set up some power intensive stuff on the east side of your base), as you can get away with running fewer wires. What other benefits are there? 

 

[nakomaru]

Yep, basically using automation directly on transformers will create losses, but they have no runoff.

• Switching batteries gives you unlimited power over your main lines, and those can be any type.
• This means you can run a cheap main line through the whole map.
• When you expand into solar power, or any other power plant at a new location, they can be trivially connected to the main line. Just add heavy watt for the genrerators, batteries and heavy transformers at the new location, and connect heavy transformers to the cheap main line.
• These points eliminate the need to make small power plants to deal with local loads.

[LucidFugue]

Guess I'll be re-jigging my power setup again. Thanks for the explanation! 

Last time I tried to get fancy I built a battery bank but I didn't understand the principles behind battery switching at that stage, so what I was doing wound up feeling like a waste. It was mostly dis-aggregating power generation from distribution, but only to make it easier to feed in from remote generators.