transformer how does one effectively use a large transformer?

[geniusthemaster]

ive been avoiding them by using high conductive wire and heavy watt wire.

 

when i tried to separate circuits using a transformer in early game dev it didnt seem to work properly;

 

and whats the point of storing voltage in the transformer? is it a necessity for load balancing or just to waist energy when you load from a saved game?

[sktzofreak101]

I generally use them when I need 1-2k power draw off the main line so I dont have to use 2 little transformers (and thus more space). Also I think if you use them backwards to add charge into your main line it will add more charge/tick than the little one, but I'm not 100% on that. As far as the power stored in it, that I don't have an answer/guess for.

[Steve8]

Hook up several generators with heavy watt wire. That can be thousands of kW. Then hook the generators to the input side and continue with conductive wire from the output side. You can distribute a larger amount of power among several smaller nets that way. Its 4kW load is a bit oversized given that conductive wire only carries 2kW. But it's still better than 1kW

[TLW]

16 minutes ago, geniusthemaster said:

and whats the point of storing voltage in the transformer?

It's an artifact of how they are implemented under the hood. They act more like a battery than happens to share two different circuits than an actual transformer.

 

(Can only be charged by the input circuit; can only be discharged by the output circuit. Rate limited in a rather obtuse manner.)

[Promethien]

28 minutes ago, sktzofreak101 said:

I generally use them when I need 1-2k power draw off the main line so I dont have to use 2 little transformers (and thus more space). Also I think if you use them backwards to add charge into your main line it will add more charge/tick than the little one, but I'm not 100% on that. As far as the power stored in it, that I don't have an answer/guess for.

This. They also produce the same amount of heat. I dunno why they go up to 4k but I just treat them like they are 2k. 

[DarkMoge]

4k can be used when you have heavy watt wire on both ends... There are several applications...

Lets say you have an array of aquatuners, They all turn on from time to time, but you happened to somehow end up with 24 aquatuners. (well, just to simulate an idea where your whole grid can go over 20k). You do not expect them to all work in the same time... In fact, you probably expect like 3 of them to work at a time for an average of 3600W... The problem is, if you connect 24 small power transformers to your main grid straight up, you might experience a lot of energy consumption spikes. With that 4k, you hard limit part of your grid even though you end up connection 24 red transformers to 1 yellow transformer, you make sure that you system is not at risk.

When you pursue full automation of your base, you might start to scatter around autosweepers and loaders around your base, they barely consume any J per cycle, but they create a risk of energy spikes... So you can make sure that nothing goes wrong by creating subnetworks with those 4k power transformers.

Also, you might be a madman and heavy wire for 20 kW is not enough. Than transformers back and forth, batteries on both ends, multiple convoluted lanes of heavi-watt wires becomes your game.

[ZanthraSW]

Transformers do a few things.

1. They are one way. If you have critical infrastructure that needs to stay online in the case of a brownout, you can put batteries on the far side of the transformer along with the load. If the upstream grid does not have enough power, the downstream grid can still run off the local batteries without sending that power back to the larger grid.

2. Separates loads to avoid overloading wires. The load of a wire will only propagate upstream. If you run conductive wire on the out of a transformer to a total load of under 2kW, you can hook the other side to a 40kW heavy conductive wire with many many kw of load and be fine. In particular this allows you to use conductive wire to go through insulated tile but be powered from a larger power circuit.

Note that the grid with batteries attached does not see the charging of those batteries as load so charging the batteries cannot overload the circuit, but if the batteries are charged through a transformer the load is seen going to the transformer.

3. Provides integrated power shutoff by automation.

Small vs Large power transformer. Counterintuitively the small power transformer can move up to 2kW in some cases and the large power transformer 4kW, despite the fact that they store 1kJ and 4kJ respectively. Some experimentation shows that the small power transformer can be inconsistent at times however, and is only guaranteed to provide 1kJ of power output. Possibly depending on the order at which power consumers get power from the transformer.

As for why they store any energy I don't know, but I could speculate that they may store energy because the calculations for distributing power on a power grid do not propagate loads across the transformers, so it can't assign the generated power directly to the end consumers, instead they assign it to the transformer's buffer as a consumer. Since it can't know if the transformer has any active loads, it leaves the calculation for that to the next grid, which in turn assigns stored power to the consumers on it's sub grid. The stored power can be largely ignored when using the transformers.

Edit: More insufficient experimentation, I fixed the statement about small power transformers and potential power throughput. They cannot always provide consistent 2kW power throguhput even with a battery buffer, but are also not safe for >1kW potential load on normal wire.

[Lafara]

umm , I normally use power transformer with circuited smart battery cutting off at full power stored (21kW).

it make no different whether these circuit store 21kW, 24kW, or 41kW. 

what difference is overheat temperature, 55 C, 75 C, 125 C

 

 

I guess , chaining 4 small power transformers to 1 Large power transformer could give a better idea to separate power load below 2kW.

,in case you adopt Large output power plants model.

[Rhogar]

They can help eke out some extra power.  Many power setups require some power infrastructure in order to run, but still supply / load greater than 2k power output.  The transformers allow you to ignore the strain that infrastructure has on your main grid and get the full 20kw.

[KittenIsAGeek]

On 8/26/2019 at 7:19 PM, geniusthemaster said:

ive been avoiding them by using high conductive wire and heavy watt wire.

You can use large transformers with any wire you want.  Depending on your circuit setup, you may melt your wires, but that has nothing to do with the large transformer itself.

 

On 8/26/2019 at 7:19 PM, geniusthemaster said:

when i tried to separate circuits using a transformer in early game dev it didnt seem to work properly;

There were problems in the early game development with transformers that have since been fixed.  I won't go into details, since many other threads have covered this topic.  You should try again, now that everything is working much better.

 

On 8/26/2019 at 7:19 PM, geniusthemaster said:

and whats the point of storing voltage in the transformer? is it a necessity for load balancing or just to waist energy when you load from a saved game?

Transformers do not store voltage.  At all.  The way they are designed in the game is that they store a small amount of power.  This is how they regulate how much power is available to the devices on the network.  At the high side, you have your generators producing whatever power levels.  At the low side, you have a limit of 5kJ of power available per second.  1 Joule (J) per second is 1 watt -- thus your circuit on the "low" side can draw 5kw of power.  Clearly this is more than regular or conductive wire can handle without burning out, but there are ways around this issue.

To be clear, the "low" and "high" side of the ONI transformers are  really just "input" and "output."  We call them 'high' and 'low' because of their similarity to real transformers that step up (or down) voltage.  In ONI, transformers are more like a one-way valve.  On one side, you have your input power.  On the other, you have the output that is limited to a specific amount of power.  If you're only generating 4kw of power and you have a large transformer, your 'low' side can use all the available 4kw of power you're producing and no more.  This shows that unlike a real transformer, the power isn't actually transformed.  You're not increasing or decreasing anything.  You're limiting the availability of a resource.

So, with this in mind, we can do a number of interesting things using ONI transformers.  For example, lets say you have a set of generators that, combined, can produce 7kw of power.  However, you do not want any of them to be running continually.  You can set up one (or more) batteries (power storage devices) on the side with the generators, then connect a large transformer such that the "low" side connects with your main power grid.  Your larger grid will have a constant 5kw of power added to it, and the generators will kick on and off as power demands.  However, no matter how much power the rest of your base needs, the main power grid will only get 5kw of power from that set generators.  I have done this with small transformers as a method of regulating dupe "hamster wheel" power.

Another example can be when you have a very large main power grid (say, 15kw of generators) and you have an area that needs power, but you want to limit how much power is available in that area.  Lets say you've got a bunch of bunker doors.  If they all open at once, they'll use 15kw of power -- which could potentially cause other parts of your base to not have enough power to function.  So you set up a large transformer such that the 'low' side is another power grid that feeds the bunker doors. On that power grid, you then have some smaller transformers that transfer power from the 5kw line to batteries and sets of doors on much smaller wire.  The batteries will hold enough power to get the doors closed (or open), and the 5kw line will charge them back up at a reasonable rate without starving the rest of your base of power.  Without the large transformer, the series of smaller transformers would draw full power from the main grid any time the doors were used.

 

I hope this helps to answer your question and gives you an idea of the purpose of ONI transformers.

 

[Snotfroth]

11 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

Transformers do not store voltage.  At all.  The way they are designed in the game is that they store a small amount of power.

Not to be too pedantic, but don't they store energy? Power is the rate at which they disgorge that energy, which I believe is pseudo-infinite so even a small 1 kW transformer can overload normal 1 kW wire on the output side.

[KittenIsAGeek]

On 8/29/2019 at 3:40 AM, Snotfroth said:

Not to be too pedantic, but don't they store energy? 

Yes, you are correct.  I intended to write energy, but my thoughts were on where I was going with the subject as a whole and I used the wrong word.  Thanks.

[Argelle]

Based on this discussion, and @martosss old but complete tutorial, I assume transformers can be used to connect distant power sources?

 

 

Power site A --- long but normal wire -----(input) transformer (output) === heavy wire === H² generators (power site B, right side)

(steam generator, 850 W)

(left hand side)

I hope the intermitant steam engine (site A) will add power to the other site (B). And since I need to run some pumps in the A site aera and electrolyser in the B aera, I even build this:

pumps---(output)transfo(input)---steam engine---(input)transfo(output)==heavy wire==H² gen==(input)transfo(output)---electro

            consumer         //                    producer                      \\                            producer                         \\         consumer

Batteries not shown.

(current test in progress, waiting for the vent to wake up, bets are on )

[Gus Smedstad]

Cable length really has no effect in the game, with our without transformers.

Their only purpose is to isolate circuits from each other. 95% of the time you create a power backbone with heavi-watt wire, and then branch 1kw or 2kw wires from that backbone using transformers. Thus you can have 20kw of power on the backbone, and run light wire without risk of overload because the local circuit only has 1kw or 2kw of load.

Isolation also works the other way. So you can run a 2kw line with no more than 2kw of power generators into the input end of a large transformer, and hook the output to your heavi-watt backbone, and not have to worry about overloads on the 2kw generator line.

That's not so common mainly because in a good-sized base a generator bank is going to go over 2kw pretty quickly, which means you have to use multiple circuits or run a single heavi watt line. The most common case is an isolated steam turbine only putting out 800 watts.

[Argelle]

4 minutes ago, Gus Smedstad said:

 hook the output to your heavi-watt backbone

You mean hook the conductive 2 kW wire to the heavy watt 20 kW line using a transformer as I depicted ?

 

Spoiler

personal message @Gus Smedstad : your set up for meteor is under test, and it's working like a charm

 

[Gus Smedstad]

Yes, exactly. As long as you put no more than 2kw of generators on the line, you'll be fine. Including of course engineering boosts, if you're doing that.

[ZanthraSW]

An example where I used a transformer to run power from a petroleum generator in a insulated room out to the main line without a heavy watt joint plate (which has high thermal conductivity) is here:

An alternative to this is to run the heavy watt wire through a pair of liquid locks with vacuum between them.

[KittenIsAGeek]

3 hours ago, Argelle said:

Based on this discussion, and @martosss old but complete tutorial, I assume transformers can be used to connect distant power sources?

Power site A --- long but normal wire -----(input) transformer (output) === heavy wire === H² generators (power site B, right side)

 

Yes, this is a great way to use the transformer to isolate generators. Sometimes you want to insulate a room and heavi-watt joint plates are conductive.  Sometimes you want to limit how much power the generators add to your grid.  Sometimes you just have a really long run where its cheapest to use regular wire instead of heavi-watt wire.  

Here is an example of limiting the amount of power from the generators.  The wheels produce a combined total of 1200 watts when charging the battery.  However, the transformer limits the power to the grid to 1000 watts.  This means that a steady 1kw of power can be used by the grid without making the dupes run forever on the wheels.  They will always get kicked off when the battery hits full charge.

[ONIfreak]

Large transformer can be used when you have multiple power rooms with different resources and you want every power room to supply steady, the same amount of power. Let say you have nat gas power plant, coal power plant, lumber power plant, petroleum power plant, steam power plant- 5 sources. Put large transformer with shut off or smart battery connected to transformer - when every room charge it.transformer will stop working until trans it is empty - steady usage of resources instead of using one or two. ( i'm actually planning to do something similar in my base).