A new take on Battery Switching / Regular Wire Power Grids

[FSharpDotNet]

@Gamers Handbook your images almost got me to understanding... but I think I need to see the automation you have for the 2 battery, 2 hydrogen, 2 transformer setup, and then maybe I'll get it.

[GeePaw]

The GamerHandbook build video is wonderful, thank you, and so is tofof's graphic precis. Thank you both so much!

Everything's working as described so far for me. (I did have a glitch at startup where the "wrong" battery was being charged, but I cranked the right battery's parameters up and the wrong battery parameter's down until I forced the switch, then reset them.)

On the consumer side, if I understand correctly, the simple battery-flipper (no transformers) essentially replaces the transformer in a classic build. You'd use one of these everywhere you'd have used a transformer in the classic. In classic mode, I normally use a large power transformer and conductive wire and put my load such that it never (or seldom) pulls above 2kw. My questions are here, on the consumer side:

1) Do I get it? "Use one battery flipper to fill the role of one transformer in a classic build."

2) Being a doofus, in classic builds I sometimes over-draw, and because I have a transformer, no harm occurs, I just get brown-out'd until I adjust. Is that still true in this build?

3) Is 2k still the target draw for one battery-flipper? Am I better off treating the battery-flipper like a 1k circuit?

Thanks again for the fun technique. I *love* not using heavi-watt! -- GeePaw

 

[Gamers Handbook]

@BLACKBERREST3 The power part of that SPOM looks fine enough to me.  Only thing I'd change is making the one piece of regular wire on the power shutoff heavy watt, (iirc) in my experience the wires on the shutoffs need to be the heaviest wires you're using so they don't incur overload damage. 

Personally, I don't do a spom and elect to just power my oxygen makers straight from the grid, and supply the hydrogen power straight back into the grid.  This is much less of a hassle now that we can run regular wire out to our oxygen production sites, and I can be lazy and let my oxygen production back up and other such things.  Your transformer flipper there will read lower than all the others on your network due to the extreme side draw in power via the gas pumps, but I'm sure you already knew that and intentionally designed it that way.

I only use one or two small transformers because the generators are the main power suppliers, the transformer flippers are mainly just monitor the charge in the system so the generators know when to turn on and off.  @nakomaru is describing transformers when used in previous methods, where having a bunch of them is very beneficial.  That's not necessary in this design, and I found even a single large transformer on the transformer flippers is just too much to be useful.

@FSharpDotNet  Here's the current state of that hydrogen generator setup, now with automation overlay!

Spoiler

https://imgur.com/a/t6H0bzh

@GeePaw Yup, a standard flipper battery is used in lieu of a transformer like you'd see in a typical heavy watt backbone style power grid.  So the answer to 1 is Yes. 

The answer to 2 is this battery flippers don't brown out when too much power is drawn, it overloads instead.  However, the large transformer will overload conductive wire and if you're already playing with large transformers just fine then you are designing your power grids without overloading anyway.  if you desperately need overload protection for some reason, you can always put a small transformer (or two for conductive wire) on the consumer side of a battery flipper.

3 is complicated because you can draw as much as you want from a battery.  For constant sustained use of 2kw, I've found a 2 battery flipper that alternates batteries for 100% uptime to perfectly keep up.  Once you go over that is when you start getting into heavy watt wire or splitting it up into 2 separate flipper circuits.  You can also add more batteries to your flipper, but it's probably better off to just split up your circuit into 2 different flippers at that point.  For intermittent power spikes, flipper batteries are excellent and can handle much higher than 2kw (depending on how often and long it is on, and of course make sure to use heavy watt wire from the flipper to the consumers).  One battery may even be fine, again depending on the specific use case.  I've used one battery effectively for a network of pumps and sweepers that rarely get used, a rarely used aquatuner, and other such things, but all of them were below 2kw usage at the same time and used very sparingly.

[BLACKBERREST3]

5 hours ago, Gamers Handbook said:

Only thing I'd change is making the one piece of regular wire on the power shutoff heavy watt, (iirc) in my experience the wires on the shutoffs need to be the heaviest wires you're using so they don't incur overload damage.

if I remember correctly, I think that the wires will overload if you don't sync them with another gate. battery syncing is still a thing with switches so they aren't simultaneously charging/discharging on the same circuit within 1-tic. a second gate will fix this, usually an OR gate but other types work too. I did a couple tests on it before, I don't think that the reg&heavi will connect if a regular wire is sitting on the charging side of the shutoffs.If they still overload, then you may be right and I've missed something.

5 hours ago, Gamers Handbook said:

but I'm sure you already knew that and intentionally designed it that way.

I had thought about that too. I initially designed it that way because I liked how the wires were routed like that. I didn't mind it running full time either because I am usually drowning in water by the time I make something like that. usually to get an accurate reading for automation you wouldn't have anything hooked up to that portion of the switch, I just didn't want to add more power infrastructure and just use what was there. As far as I know, hydrogen seems to be the best power source early-midgame before turbines and it's a little easier to set up imo.

Just in case people are wondering what I've been doing. I took a little break off oni to finish another game.

Spoiler

 

[psusi]

Oh my God this is amazing!  I'm never using heavy watt wire again!

 

By the way, take your first coal gen room, get rid of the coal generator, and replace the smart battery on the left with half a dozen jumbo batteries and won't that get you a smart, scalable, distributed grid level surge battery?  The generators will always run to top off the battery, but when you decide to switch on 3 aqua tuners and really strain your power grid beyond what your generators can sustain, the battery will supply the rest to prevent any brownouts for quite some time.  Need more high load time?  Add more jumbo batteries.  Need more peak load?  Split the jumbo batteries across more modules that can be spread around your base as you like.

[Gamers Handbook]

@BLACKBERREST3  That was fixed awhile ago and I believe we've actually discussed it in the past.  The point I'm getting at is how one weak wire on an otherwise fine circuit will overload.  I believe when the battery is discharging on the heavy watt circuit that regular wire is technically connected to the heavy watt and will overload even though that power shutoff is in the disconnected/off state. 

Breaks are good, it leaves the game still fun and exciting when we come back.  I've been playing the new Call of Duty for the last 2 weeks.

@psusi Thanks!  The problem is the transformer becomes a bottleneck.  I tried different forms of "boosters" and they just didn't seem to help at all (and sometimes made it worse).  With this system it's much better to just have more generators ready to turn on and their fuel stockpiled, especially since batteries lose charge and create heat just by existing.

[KittenIsAGeek]

Advanced Power Regulation (or how to send 50kw power over regular wire):

In my example I'll be using Conductive wire, mostly because all my smooth hatches ate through my copper ore supply, leaving me with tons of refined copper.  However, this is a proof of concept and not a final product.  

First, the Supply side:

Spoiler

Here we have a large transformer capable of delivering 4kw of power from my main backbone.  The output wire can be any type, even regular wire, because no load will actually be applied to this line.

Next we have the Input half of the Load side:

Spoiler

 

This battery has an either-or toggle.  When the battery needs to charge, it sends a green signal to the left switch and a red signal to the right.  This connects it to the supply and disconnects it from the load.  The wire at the left switch can be any type of wire, just like the line coming in.  When the switch is open, it is NOT connected to the load.  However, the wire just to the RIGHT of the left switch IS connected to the Load.  You can see the difference in the first picture: White wire is load, purple wire is supply.  The wires for the load MUST be capable of handling the full load.

Output half of the Load:

Spoiler

 

In this particular case, I have another large transformer on the output side, feeding into another heavi-watt grid.  However, I only have about 3kw of sustained power available on that output grid.  This is because of the downtime to charge the battery using this particular method.  There are other methods using multiple switched batteries, but this shows the concept well enough.

Here's how it works: The large transformer on the input side allows power to be drawn from my main power grid to charge a battery.  The battery doesn't count as a consumer, so as long as ONLY batteries are there, you won't burn out the wire.  Remember, in this setup I'm charging at 4kw on a 2kw wire and it isn't burning out.  The wire could be regular 1kw wire and this would still be true.  Once the battery is full, the switch removes it from the Supply side and connects it to the Load side.  A transformer counts as a load for all power supplied to its "low" side.  That means the wire between the battery and the transformer MUST be able to handle all the power the transformer will handle.  The large transformer can move 4kw, so the wire must be heavi-watt.  The battery on the right, after the transformer, is a buffer so that power isn't lost while switching.

You could put two large transformers on the Supply side and charge the smart battery at 8kw, reducing the time it takes to charge the smart battery.  Or you could put two large transformers on the Load side of the smart battery to charge the buffer twice as fast.  The smart battery would charge at 4kw, then discharge into the large battery at 8kw.  If you had two large transformers on the Supply side and two large transformers on the Load side, you would be able to charge the smart battery at 8kw, then discharge into the large battery at 8kw.  Your total sustained maximum load would be about 6kw with this design.

Spoiler

This is about as simple as it gets for moving power over cheap wire.  There's no fancy automation and no burned out wires.  It is simple, doesn't require fancy automation, and its quick to set up. The disadvantage is that you would need 12 large transformers and 2 small transformers on each side to move 50kw of power (your upper maximum).

[psusi]

1 hour ago, Gamers Handbook said:

@psusi Thanks!  The problem is the transformer becomes a bottleneck.  I tried different forms of "boosters" and they just didn't seem to help at all (and sometimes made it worse).  With this system it's much better to just have more generators ready to turn on and their fuel stockpiled, especially since batteries lose charge and create heat just by existing.

Yea, I came to that conclusion a bit ago too.   However, to handle power sources you can't just turn off to save fuel, I'm going to set up a secondary power bus connected to those sources, and a room full of jumbo batteries with a switcher to couple it to the secondary grid, and a transformer to feed the main grid.  That way things like solar, steam turbines, and duplicants running on priority 1 hamster wheels because they have nothing better to do can always store excess power in the battery bank for later use.

I am just coming back to the game after taking almost a year off and I used to use the switcher to be able to supply sub grids from my main heavy watt wire bank without overloading the regular line from the transformer on the main bank, but that meant the sub-grid could only consume on average, as much power was left over from the transformer, on average, but at least it smoothed out the peak loads to avoid wire burns.  I always had a feeling there was some way to use the concept to have multiple distributed sites around the base that generated power and multiple sub-stations feeding the loads, but I couldn't figure out how to do it until now.  No more heavy watt wires or "main" battery banks for me!

[KittenIsAGeek]

1 hour ago, psusi said:

Yea, I came to that conclusion a bit ago too.   However, to handle power sources you can't just turn off to save fuel, I'm going to set up a secondary power bus connected to those sources, and a room full of jumbo batteries with a switcher to couple it to the secondary grid, and a transformer to feed the main grid.  That way things like solar, steam turbines, and duplicants running on priority 1 hamster wheels because they have nothing better to do can always store excess power in the battery bank for later use.

For your purposes, you could use transformers rather than batteries.  For example, here are a couple different generator configurations:

Spoiler

1:

 

2:

 

3:

input:

output:

In case 1, any time the steam turbine runs, its power is distributed onto the main grid. This is the highest priority, and the only time it won't push the power onto the grid is if there's no power being drawn from the grid.  As long as the combined power produced by all generators connected this way is less than the total use of your power grid, you're fine.  There is no need to try and store power in a battery because all the power produced is sent to the grid.

Case 2 is a standard "If the battery is low, turn the generator on" configuration.  When the generator is running, power goes to the grid.  Excess power gets stored in the battery.  You can set up a number of generators this way to kick on depending on the amount of power your circuit needs.

Case 3: Constant Power Output.  In the first image (input), we see two generators connected to smart batteries as in case 2.  The smart batteries are configured such that the Petroleum generator only kicks in when there is a high demand for power, or there is no natural gas in the pipes.  On the second image (output) side, where it connects to the main grid, there are two small transformers.  This limits the total output to a maximum of 2kw.  Because there is energy storage on the generator side of the transformers, the output to the grid is a lower priority than case 1.  This means that if my current power draw is 5kw, and I'm producing 4.5kw of power using the method shown in case 1, then only 500 watts will be drawn from this connection.  Additionally, the generator in case 2 will not be running at all, because its battery will remain fully charged.

[psusi]

@KittenIsAGeek Yes, but that still requires you to use heavy watt wire as your main bus, and you have to have a large transformer on that bus to feed every 2kw branch load circuit, and another to accept input from every 2kw generator feeder line.  The star topology gets a little out of control when you have 3+ power plants and 4+ branch circuits.  Then your main heavy watt bus has to have 7+ large transformers on it and a couple of smart batteries all in one central location.  The main bus is also limited to to the max current of the heavy watt wire.  This method does away with all of the heavy watt wire and you can put as many branch circuits and as many power plants on it as you want, with one massive basic wire bus that goes everywhere and carries unlimited power.  You just have to insert sub-stations spread around to couple the main bus to the branch circuits, but each sub-station doesn't need an independent line back to a transformer on the main bus.

[KittenIsAGeek]

I was simply offering another alternative for power distribution.  Is it perfect? Nope.  But it is simple, doesn't use much logic, and will work quite well for most cases.  You are not obligated in any way to use it.  I suspect that your reply is only addressing the third example I gave for connecting generators to the grid.  Yes, that particular example does require a bit more infrastructure.  

35 minutes ago, psusi said:

have a large transformer on that bus to feed every 2kw branch load circuit,

That's sort of what the transformers are there for.  Two small transformers will limit the power on the line to 2kw, regardless of consumers, so you can over-build and still be OK.  Many times I have a circuit that has 3kw of consumers, but most of the time only 1.2kw of power is being used.  If, for some reason, too many consumers go active simultaneously, the wire doesn't burn out.  If you're using a switched battery network, then you could burn out a wire -- unless you're using a transformer. At which point you're using two batteries, logic, and a transformer to do what I'm using only a transformer for.  Do I need to use heavi-watt wire in some locations? Yep.  However, I feel that's a fine compromise to keep my circuit simple yet robust.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with using a switched battery network.  I just wanted to offer some alternatives that provide similar functionality.

[psusi]

2 minutes ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

I was simply offering another alternative for power distribution.  Is it perfect? Nope.  But it is simple, doesn't use much logic, and will work quite well for most cases.  You are not obligated in any way to use it.  I suspect that your reply is only addressing the third example I gave for connecting generators to the grid.  Yes, that particular example does require a bit more infrastructure.  

Yes, it works, but the point of this thread is that there is a much better way.  No, it wasn't limited to only your third example.  All of your examples involved a main heavy watt wire bus.  That requires a transformer on that bus to connect it to every load circuit, and to every generator circuit that isn't directly connected to the main bus.  With this method, the main bus can go everywhere it is needed, without spending lots of metal on heavy watt wire, and dealing with the fact that it can't go through walls except with a bridge, is expensive, and has a huge decor penalty.

5 minutes ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

That's sort of what the transformers are there for.  Two small transformers will limit the power on the line to 2kw, regardless of consumers, so you can over-build and still be OK.  Many times I have a circuit that has 3kw of consumers, but most of the time only 1.2kw of power is being used.  If, for some reason, too many consumers go active simultaneously, the wire doesn't burn out.

Yes, but then you get brown-out and some loads shut down.  For some loads, that is OK, but for many it can be very bad.  It is also annoying that since they added the second type of transformer, you now need TWO of the basic ones to supply a load circuit instead of just one.

8 minutes ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

If you're using a switched battery network, then you could burn out a wire -- unless you're using a transformer. At which point you're using two batteries, logic, and a transformer to do what I'm using only a transformer for. 

The first sentence is wrong, which you point out in the second.  To put that another way, to avoid burning wires, you need either a switched network, or a heavy watt wire main bus + transformers.  Yes, you need the twin batteries and logic with this method, but with the old one, you need not only twin transformers, but also they must be located on the main heavy watt wire bus.  With this method, the batteries+logic is spread out at each load or generator center instead of transformers all being concentrated on the main bus.

 

10 minutes ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

There is absolutely nothing wrong with using a switched battery network.  I just wanted to offer some alternatives that provide similar functionality.

The switched battery network is the alternative, the heavy watt wire main bus is the original

 

[Gamers Handbook]

For anyone who was asking for additional clarification via a long form video, including dupes building the design, I recently tried out YouTube's live stream feature doing just that.  Unfortunately my rural ISP dropped my connection mid stream so it's in two parts.  Part one is here (starts at ~4:40) and part two is here.

@KittenIsAGeek  The differences between the traditional flipper battery setup you mention and this design are laid out very well in @tofof's post on page 1.  This design's main benefit over the design you showed is being able to tier your power generation, just like we do with a basic heavy watt backbone design.  This is a feature many people really like, myself included.  Your design can do that, but it requires extra power or automation wires, or a central battery bank, or having all your generators in the same place, or going back to a heavy watt backbone design.  While the concept for this design might be confusing, actually building and using it isn't hard at all (check out the live stream I just linked above for proof of that).  As secondary and tertiary benefits, this design's power output also isn't limited by heavy watt wire's capacity (which is important to those with HUGE bases), and it isn't limited by the output of large transformers since the generators are hooked directly to the main power wire.

[The Flying Fox]

I wouldn't say this is exactly a new concept, just not a well posted one, I suppose.  I never made a separate topic on it directly before, mostly just posted my designs in other power/steam turbine topics.  I personally thought it was more well known?  But yeah, I been setting up my own power networks like this before the rocket update.

 

Generator > Battery > Transformer > Base charging wire > Bunch of switched power banks throughout the base > local circuits

 

Certainly does work pretty fantastically in avoiding the use of Heavy Watt wire anywhere.  Once the small transformers came out, I've never had any issues with setups like this.  I feel that the idea didn't quite take off before is that people back then might have considered the design an 'exploit'.  Obviously, it hasn't been removed since live soo...

[Gamers Handbook]

@The Flying Fox  You need to read page 1, specifically @tofof's amazing alternative explanation post, as we've been over this many times.  Or watch the video.  This is a new concept and you are concentrating on the consumer side of the power grid (which is a normal flipper battery setup as stated in the video and therefore nothing new) instead of the generator side where the transformer flipper is.  The transformer flipper is the new concept; and it isn't merely a generator, battery, and transformer like you have shown in your pictures.

[Ixenzo]

Is there any fix for stuck main bus-side batteries? I have to notice it not working, move the sliders around, and then sync the whole grid. Pita.

[Gamers Handbook]

So in my video I used for reporting the bug I proposed a solution for automatically fixing power shutoffs that get stuck.  That may work fine for many power consumers, however for transformer flippers you will still get desync issues.  So check out this forum post where some more complicated things were proposed that should work for near instant resetting of the power shutoffs:

 

[psusi]

BTW, using coal generators with the transflip has one little annoying glitch: when the automation signal stops them, stupid dupes drop the coal they were trying to supply them with where they are instead of delivering it.  As soon as I finish my rodriguez spom with 2 hydrogen plants, I think I'm going to just do away with the transflip on the coal gens and just let one run all the time and the hydrogen plants will auto throttle back until the coal gen runs out of coal and needs reloaded.  Once I burn off enough coal I can manually shut down the coal generator and by then should have plenty of hydrogen stockpiled.

[Gamers Handbook]

Not only does a coal generator have an interesting set of boxes that must be checked before it will even request coal, they also can't be resupplied when receiving a red automation signal.  I agree that this is very annoying, and I'm told there's a mod to change if for those who like mods.  However, this issue isn't related to transformer flippers, it is just something that happens when using automation (so basically smart batteries) with coal generators in general. 

An autosweeper and container full of coal next to the generators will improve the situation, as will having a larger range on the smart battery turning on the coal generators (say 70-90% vs 85-90%).  They aren't fixes, but they do make using automated coal generators much more tolerable.  And if you have a lot of coal you can always burn a generator (or several) wide open 24/7 without automation, if you really wanted to.

[psusi]

15 minutes ago, Gamers Handbook said:

However, this issue isn't related to transformer flippers, it is just something that happens when using automation (so basically smart batteries) with coal generators in general. 

It is worse with a transflip because it tends to toggle on and off a lot more frequently than a conventional smart battery.

15 minutes ago, Gamers Handbook said:

will improve the situation, as will having a larger range on the smart battery turning on the coal generators (say 70-90% vs 85-90%).

That doesn't seem to help because it's the sense battery that keeps flipping back and forth a lot which makes the storage battery ping-pong between high and low quickly as well.  Even with the sense battery at 0-100%, it only takes 10 seconds to flip.

[psusi]

I just realized that you don't actually need to have the generators on the local side of the transflip.  I was thinking you were limited to only 2 hydrogen generators because of the 2 kW export limit of the transformers, but that's not true.  If they are tied to the main trunk instead, they will still provide power when the left battery gets low and it will still work the same, and without the 2 kW limit, so you can say, have 4 hydrogen generators controlled by a single transflip.

[Gamers Handbook]

@psusi  By a conventional smart battery, I assume you mean one used as part of a Heavy Watt Backbone?  The charging will be the same rate, as all the generators are hooked into the main power line and therefore all the batteries in both scenarios.  The discharging will be limited to 2kW max with a Transformer Flipper, and that won't be all the time either due to the toggling nature.  2kW in a Heavy Watt Backbone power grid is only 8kW of constant power draw with 4 smart batteries, which is a pretty realistic situation (say one battery each for: nat gas, hydrogen, coal, and petroleum generators).  And this is the scenarios that favor the Heavy Watt Backbone; use 1 transformer in the Transformer Flipper or have more than 8kW of constant power draw or less smart batteries in a Heavy Watt Backbone and the Transformer Flipper battery is going to discharge slower than a conventional smart battery.

Can you provide a picture?  I can't help but thinking that something is wired up differently.  Are all transformer flippers either one or two transformer?  (don't mix and match, everything is either one or the other)  Are your generators hooked into the main power line?

If you had your generators wired only into the transformer flipper, then that would be causing charge spikes.  Also tripping on a huge batch of generators coming on at once when you have a relatively low power demand (say you consume 2kW, but have 20kW of generators wired up) could cause a similar charging spike.

[psusi]

I just have 2 coal gens and a 2 battery transflip, just like your video showed.  Gens are on the local side of the transflip just like you showed.  Loads are pretty low ( when I'm not running the metal refiner ) so that may have something to do with it.  I also may not have the thresholds set optimally.

I also did the math and found that making a big transflip using 4 batteries and a large transformer with some heavy watt wire ends up using less space and less metal than two separate ones, so as long as you have two types of peak generator you want to control but they are close to one another, you can do that instead of giving each their own with a pair of small transformers.  To minimize the heavy watt wire though you need to put the big transformer in the middle between the left and right pair of batteries.

[Hellshound38]

Pshh... Let's go one step further and see if this exploit I saw on reddit works for more then just Aquatiners.

 

[crypticorb]

@Gamers Handbook I saw this idea posted in other threads, and was at first averse to using it, primarily because I'm a EEET graduate, and using weird electrical ONI exploits seemed a bit too... exploity.

I came around in the end, mostly because I really hated the idea of creating an entirely new service shaft to hide heavy-watt wire, or making my 1000+ tile power spine into refined metal. For those people who wanted to justify using a system like this despite feeling "exploity", in real life, power companies transmit massive amounts of power over long distance with relatively small wires by transforming the power to incredibly high voltages using alternating current (AC).

I made a few modifications to your basic battery flipper, mostly compacting its footprint to an incredibly small 4x4 space, have a look:

This is the left-to-right version, I have another version I'll post that is right-to-left. It functions exactly the same as your original circuit, but fits in a minuscule space, and can be easily expanded left or right with more batteries for higher loads.

If you use the blueprints mod, here are the files for the blueprint I created, note that the blueprint materials are all gold:

battery flipper left-to-right.blueprint

battery flipper right-to-left.blueprint

Let me know what you think!

 

EDIT: One question I had, other than the expense of refined metals, why do you advocate the use of 1kw wires for the backbone?

If you had lots of refined metals (metal rich asteroid with metal volcanoes), would it not be better to use the 2kw wires? It would allow you to have a much higher occasional temporary load on the backbone, and zero decor penalty instead of the small penalty.