Overloads with chained transformers

[lonelysquirrel]

I have a circuit behind a small transformer, with no generators or batteries on it, but it is still getting an overload.  I did something different this time but I thought it should work.  My setup is the following:

2x Petrol Generator (ethanol)+ Smart Battery -> Heavy Watt Wire -> Large Transformer -> Conductive wires -> 2x Small transformer -> Normal Wires

Thus I have 3 circuits, each with different types of wire. 

• Heavy watt: generators and battery
• Conductive: has no batteries or load, except for the small transformers
• Normal Wire: has all the consumers, no generators and no batteries.

The idea is to use the 4kJ large transformer to power (eventually) 4 small transformers, and keep the heavy watt wire isolated to only the generator room.  I thought the regular wire circuits could be used in 2 different ways

• Without batteries and above 1kW consumers -- produces brownouts but no overloads
• With batteries and under 1kW consumers -- shouldn't brownout and can't overload.

Yet I'm getting an overload in the regular wire circuit on the first variation  (see pic)  Circuit status is 1260W, but the only thing powering it is the small transformer.

 

Then when I connected a third small transfomer to the conductive wire circuit, I am getting overloads on the conductive wire circuit.   But you can see in the second screenshot, there is 0W on this circuit.

Can anyone explain why this use of transformers shouldn't work?

[badgamer123]

i dun know too,but connecting many transformer on a chain always give some wired result....
i can only advise using battery switch for now...

[avilmask]

Even though energy grid doesn't state so, transformers are actually energy consumers, and when they recharge from 0 to max they use up energy grid's capacity and may cause overloads in chain setups when there is also another energy consumers.

[David Olshanski]

Each small transformer can draw 1000 when they are pulling from the grid to feed your batteries further downstream. I see from your second screenshot that you have 2 small transformers (one to the left going to the sieve), and another up high going to your air filter. Those two can draw 2000W (which will max out your conductive wire.), but then you also have something down low with the conductive wire... I can't see what it is, but anything additional will be enough to go over your 2000W limit.

 

[lonelysquirrel]

There's a third small transformer at the bottom of the screen, so yes, that's what is consuming.  I thought that transformers didn't count as consumers, which is why the trick using power switches and automation worked.

I wonder why the large transformer outputs 4kW then if there's no 4kW rated wire.  Yeah, there's heavy watt but then if you use that you don't need a transformer at all.

This answers one question then, why the conductive wire circuit is overloading.  But my regular circuit behind a small transformer is overloading as well, and I thought small transformers limited their output to 1kW.

 

[mackhuffer]

There is a case where transformers can draw more than their rated wattage: on a circuit that only has transformers as suppliers and consumers. It looks like that may be the case in your second image, but it's hard to tell. Compare your setup to what I did to test for this:

 

[lonelysquirrel]

1 hour ago, mackhuffer said:

There is a case where transformers can draw more than their rated wattage: on a circuit that only has transformers as suppliers and consumers. It looks like that may be the case in your second image, but it's hard to tell. Compare your setup to what I did to test for this:

 

Yes, this is what's going on.  I've got the generator circuit on hww generating 4kW.  That's feeding 3 large transformers.  2 of those are running Metal Refineries and have their own 2kW circuits. 

The last large transformer is feeding small transformers.  I'm seeing consumption above 1k on the child circuit and overload damage.  I even cut the number of children to 2 so that I don't have the different overload problem on the parent.  This circuit is running normal wire, no generators or batteries, and it's behind a small transformer.  This is the usual and simple way to stop overload damage at the risk of brownouts, and it ran for 50 cycles without issue.   As soon as I put a parent transformer in between generators and the small transformer, within 1 cycle the normal wire had overloaded -- even though nothing changed on the normal wire circuit.

[DarkMaster13]

Usually what you use transformers for is going from heavii-watt to a lower cable type.  That way you can have one centralized power plant that supplies all of your power needs via separate power lines.

Agree that the large transformer's 4kw limit makes no sense.  You'll never have a reason to have it provide power to anything stronger than the conductive wire's 2kw.

[Ecu]

1 hour ago, DarkMaster13 said:

Agree that the large transformer's 4kw limit makes no sense.  You'll never have a reason to have it provide power to anything stronger than the conductive wire's 2kw.

Actually there is a perfectly sensible use of the 4kw limit of the large transformers.  That is to isolate a grid of multiple small transformers and allow them to share a set of isolated batteries.  You can take a high voltage line and run that through the large transformer, using high voltage line through batteries to a set of four small transformers, which then run a set of devices on their own circuits.  In this way, the main grid cannot pull power from the isolated battery bank, but the battery bank can pull power from the main grid.  Quite useful.

[miauly]

9 hours ago, lonelysquirrel said:

I have a circuit behind a small transformer, with no generators or batteries on it, but it is still getting an overload.

I had the same happening as well, without large transformers or anything special I could point to. Just for some reason circuits behind a small transformer sometimes overload. Last time I had it on the preview branch, where I had a heavy wire single circuit connecting all batteries and generators and three small transformers, each having its own grid (no connections for sure). One of small grids got an overload, it had consumers totaling to around ~1.5k. To me it seems related to a starving case, when consumers indeed try to draw more than a 1000. I don't think I can pinpoint this enough to bug report it though..

[mathmanican]

5 hours ago, miauly said:

when consumers indeed try to draw more than a 1000

The transformer itself stores a small amount of power. This is what allows your wires to fry, namely the tiny extra bit of power in the transformer itself. If this power takes too long to discharge (in addition to the 1000 being drawn), then you will fry your wires.

Try the following setup in a sandbox environment (make a new world if you need a place to play so you can understand what the issue is, or download this file (Spacestation.sav) and try it yourself).

•  17 fridges will easily fry your wire. Why?  The power draw from the extra fridge is quite small, so it takes extra time to drain the internal power from the transformer. As such, the "over 2k" buffer written into ONI code runs out, and your wires start to fry.
• 4 tepidizers (yes 4) don't fry the wires. Why? Simple, two of them run full time and the "power available" on the hightlighted tranformer slowly rises till it hits enough power to turn on the third (oddly enough, the 4th turns on as well - probably a new bug to exploit into infinite power). Since the power drains instantly, the internal ONI buffer on the "over 2k" does not run out, and your wires do not fry. 

The save file is on cycle 1, and has plenty of premade steam power to last you through all experiments you want to play. 

Short Summary: Transformers do NOT prevent overloads. Don't put more than 1kw on small wires, or 2kw on conductive wires, if you want to 100% guarantee you don't get a short. 

Long Summary: There is an internal buffer in the ONI code that prevents wires from overloading. If power gets drained by large machines, then you may be safe. Somehow you can use the short bursts of power to power more devices than should be available to be powered... (infinite power here we come). The rest of this long summary may appear in another post soon.