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A new take on Battery Switching / Regular Wire Power Grids


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1 hour ago, psusi said:

Is there any reason that the number of batteries in the transformer flipper has to be an even amount?  i.e. can you use 1 on the right and 2 on the left to control generators?  I can't think of why not.

You are free to design such a system. The benefit of it will be it will have more runoff, consume more space and generate extra heat. If you're into that.

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13 hours ago, crypticorb said:

why do you advocate the use of 1kw wires for the backbone?

Cheaper and immediately available. Once you have lots of refined metal, like volcanoes or lead, nothing stops you from converting the main line into conductive wire.

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I'm in the process of ripping out my entire power backbone and replacing each section with battery flippers, but ran into a few significant issues:

1. How do I sync a load of batteries in a bank with the battery flipper design, or are they even necessary? This can be rather important for when I need to conserve power when NG geyser and other fuel sources are low and need to rely on solar w/ batteries.

2. If I need to supply to a load that is greater than 2kw, how do I go about it? One example is a triple aquatuner cooler for liquid hydrogen production, sour gas coolers, or a meteor clearing array. Would I have to use a 1kw wire to heavy-watt wire in the battery flipper, with more batteries?

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1 hour ago, nakomaru said:

You are free to design such a system. The benefit of it will be it will have more runoff, consume more space and generate extra heat. If you're into that.

Umm... no?  I'm asking if you can use one LESS battery instead of needing 2 on both sides.  I want two on the one side because I want two different automation signals to turn on generators at different levels.

3 minutes ago, crypticorb said:

2. If I need to supply to a load that is greater than 2kw, how do I go about it? One example is a triple aquatuner cooler for liquid hydrogen production, sour gas coolers, or a meteor clearing array. Would I have to use a 1kw wire to heavy-watt wire in the battery flipper, with more batteries?

You shouldn't need more batteries, but yea, if you want > 2kw you either need to use heavy wire or give each AT its own flipper.  If you don't mind the AT sometimes not having power for a moment while the battery recharges, then you could get by with only one battery for each.  If they are right next to each other though, it may be better to just use a pair of batteries and heavy watt wire to all 3 ATs.

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6 hours ago, psusi said:

I'm asking if you can use one LESS battery instead of needing 2 on both sides.  I want two on the one side because I want two different automation signals to turn on generators at different levels.

Sorry, having trouble picturing exactly what you mean then. I don't think you will find success with using only one battery on your consumer switch (without a transformer to replace the second one), if that's what you have in mind. Good luck.

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53 minutes ago, nakomaru said:

Sorry, having trouble picturing exactly what you mean then. I don't think you will find success with using only one battery on your consumer switch (without a transformer to replace the second one), if that's what you have in mind. Good luck.

I was planning on using a 4 battery transformer flipper rather than a 2 battery one shown in the OP since I plan on having two generators possibly set at different levels near each other.  I figured it would save resources to build one larger transflip rather than two separate ones.  Initially I was thinking that if I went to two batteries on the left side then I would have to do the same on the right to keep it balanced, but the more I've thought about it the more I think you don't have to have the sides even.

I think the important part to keep the different transflips synchronized is for them each to have the same ratio of batteries on the right ( controlling the shutoffs ) to transformer output.  So since I'm going to use a 4kw transformer instead of 2 1kws, the second battery on the right would keep the proper ratio, but I think I can skip the second battery as long as I build all of my transformer flippers that way.  That is, I won't be able to add a 2 battery + 2 kw transformer flipper later and have them stay synchronized.  Hrm.. maybe I'll throw in the second battery actually ;)

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56 minutes ago, nakomaru said:

Also try a build without any transformer flipper (see page 2). I'm sure you will find it to be more powerful, easier to control, use less space and automation, and won't charge already full batteries.

What do you mean won't charge already full batteries?  Your setup works as long as you only have one big power plant, but the transformer flipper lets you have several distributed power plants around the map that can prioritize their generators differently from one another.

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You can have multiple power plants on the same backbone. The transformer drain order is determined by build order. Not sure how either is much different in this regard.

I'll have to check/demonstrate the other thing later. Disregard, no problems with overcharging.

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1 hour ago, nakomaru said:

You can have multiple power plants on the same backbone. The transformer drain order is determined by build order. Not sure how either is much different in this regard.

I'll have to check/demonstrate the other thing later.

You can have multiple power plants on the same backbone, but you can't use the smart batteries to prioritize one generator over another unless you use the transformer flipper method this thread is about.  I have no idea what you are saying about transformer drain order.

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You can prioritize them if you use this fact.

11 hours ago, nakomaru said:

The transformer drain order is determined by build order.

Works best with powerful substations of like 3-5 transformers each. So if you tend to make a solar station, a gas station and a petrol station, you can pick the order they drain by rebuilding their transformers.

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15 hours ago, nakomaru said:

You can prioritize them if you use this fact.

Works best with powerful substations of like 3-5 transformers each. So if you tend to make a solar station, a gas station and a petrol station, you can pick the order they drain by rebuilding their transformers.

I'm still not following.  If they all have transformers feeding one main wire, then when an empty battery is connected to the wire to recharge, they will all feed it power at the same time.  Which one was built when doesn't matter.

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Well I finally built the beast.  1 sense battery, 2 generator control batteries, two 4kw transformers.  Instead of using shutoffs to the transformers I just used two transformers and connected them to the automation grid since it let me use less heavy watt wire ( only 10 in total ).  Gets me 4 kw peak battery drain to the grid, and control two different sets of hydrogen generators for less metal and space than two separate transformer flippers.  The main set is inside the mini rodruiguez spom so its heat is deleted by burning the hydrogen, and the backup set is outside and only kicks on when the main set isn't keeping up with demand.  Note that none of the generators are on the local side of the transformer flipper, which means it's a full 4kw peak drain from the batteries, plus any additional power from the generators ( 1600 or 3200 watts depending on whether one or both sets are engaged ) can charge the flipper sub stations on the grid.  Also I can extend the backup set to 3 or 4 generators without adding any more batteries or shutoffs or transformers.  I plan on using the hydrogen gens for peak demand, and for now I just manually turn on a coal generator on the backbone ( no transflip of its own ) when the hydrogen reservoir is getting low.  I plan on adding a petrol generator in a power plant room and when I fire it up with engine's tune up, it should power the entire grid with the hydrogen generators going into standby for the 3 cycles that the tune up lasts and bank the hydrogen gas, then shut down the petrol gen once the buff wears off.

 

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8 hours ago, psusi said:

I'm still not following.  If they all have transformers feeding one main wire, then when an empty battery is connected to the wire to recharge, they will all feed it power at the same time.  Which one was built when doesn't matter.

The idea is to have such high power that your batteries charge instantly, so your low priority transformers won't be able to contribute to a charge.

However, after testing on the current patch, it is much more annoying to get to work than before due to a bug fix with the transformer. Details below.

Spoiler

Transformers still discharge when a consumer demands load based on the order they were built. However, due to a previous bug, transformers used to be able to discharge their entire 4000J instantly, followed by 800J per game tick. This is why people used to overload their conductive wire circuits when using only 2 small transformers: their power capacity was actually higher than 1kW at the start of discharge.

This ability to instantly discharge means that with only 3 transformers, you could charge a smart battery from 50% to 100% in 1 tick. If you have 3 power stations with 3 transformers each, where would the 10kJ come from? 4000J would come from the oldest two transformers each, and 2000J would come from the 3rd oldest transformer. All 6 of your newest transformers would perform no work.

With this you could dictate power drain order while simultaneously providing the maximum power of all stations combined. This was even more important when heavi watt was 20kW max.

However, the bug was fixed, and now transformers can only deliver 800J per tick, which means with the same set up all 9 transformers will contribute 800J per tick until charged (at the last tick, only the oldest ones will provide the remaining portion).

Because the instant power of transformers is lower than before, the way to make this still work is to charge your battery switches very early, like at 95%. Then your oldest transformers will easily handle the entire charge instantly, and your newest transformers with your backup fuel will stay idle.

Here's my stage 1, solar array:

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Stage 2, petrol:

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Stage 3, gas:

Spoiler

5.gif.2983e1c77b904df931a429bc68d29cfd.gif

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@psusi  I think I'll need a picture to help diagnose further. 

Yup, you could use 2 batteries per side and a large transformer to control 2 close sets of different generators as your transformer flipper.  If you do this, please post a pic to show everyone this neat adaptation. (Hey, you did!  Sweet!)

@crypticorb I went with a spread out flipper for demonstration purposes so it was easier to understand.  I fully expect people to compact them like you've done here and to jamb them into weird spaces to fit them into their builds.  Your layout looks like it'll work just fine. 

As to the 1kw wires, it's just the lowest common denominator.  You can absolutely use conductive wire for the backbone if you want to (say you have a metal volcano or abundance of lead).  In fact, in my last base I swapped the entire backbone over to conductive once I got lead.

@psusi  The batteries in the transformer flipper are paired because they're mirrors of each other.  That way the one that controls the generator has the same (relatively/ within reason/ close enough) charge as the one controlling the flipping, and therefore an accurate reading to know when to turn the generator on and off.  If you made every transformer flipper in your power grid in this manner, or was fine with a relative setting (aka feeling it out and just adjusting the smart battery setting as  you see fit based off of results, like you'd do if you didn't want to sync your batteries) it seems like it could work. 

@crypticorb I'd have to see a picture to know for sure what you're talking about.  I assumed most people using solar are either going to hook the panels directly up to the main power line, or they're going to hook them up to a battery bank and then use a transformer (or many) to push charge out of the batteries into the main power line.  This means they'd always be using the solar power first, rather than a situation where solar is turned on and off.  However, I think a transformer flipper controlling a power shutoff (instead of a generator) that ties your solar power into the main power line should work to turn solar power on and off when you want.

To supply more than 2kW, your generators and transformer flippers are fine.  Your flippers at your consumers are what need adjusted.  You can either do multiple flippers (so one for each AT), or you can do a heavy watt wire flipper.  Once you have the heavy watt wire flipper complete, you handle the aquatuners like normal.  You can either run heavy watt to them, or you can place transformers and run 2kW wire to them like a normal power grid.  Keep in mind if your AT have a lot of uptime, I've found there's a certain point in which a flipper can't pass charge through fast enough for loads >2kW.  If that happens to you, just add another battery on each side of the flipper (or switch to two flippers).  If it's intermittent use of the AT, you'll probably be fine with a regular heavy watt wire flipper, and maybe even one that uses only 1 battery.

@psusi  What a neat alteration of the transformer flipper.  Not only do you have an uneven amount of batteries, you also have 2 transformers (one for each battery set) instead of the power shutoffs.  Just looking at it, other than the concerns (but not deal breakers) with the unbalanced batteries I mentioned earlier, it looks like it'll work pretty good.  Since you posted this a couple weeks ago, how's it been performing since then?  Any issues?

@nakomaru  Weird inconsistent performance and annoyances like you pointed out (I'd rather not have to rebuild an army of transformers every time I want to change generator usage priorities) are exactly the kind of things that drove me into lots of experimenting and eventually designing the Transformer Flipper. 

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37 minutes ago, Gamers Handbook said:

What a neat alteration of the transformer flipper.  Not only do you have an uneven amount of batteries, you also have 2 transformers (one for each battery set) instead of the power shutoffs.  Just looking at it, other than the concerns (but not deal breakers) with the unbalanced batteries I mentioned earlier, it looks like it'll work pretty good.  Since you posted this a couple weeks ago, how's it been performing since then?  Any issues?

Been working great so far, but I also have not yet tried to add a second transformer flipper to the grid.  I have set up an ethanol gen but do not regulate it with automation, instead I use a valve to choke the flow of ethanol to it so it runs for one second every 3-6 seconds to provide some extra base load power and reduce the load on the hydrogen gens.  Lately I actually keep having too much power and have to work to burn some off ( run the heck out of the metal refinery and dump the heat into the cold biome ) so that the hydrogen reservoir does not fill up.

The one problem is that it seems that there is a bug with power shutoffs where sometimes they get stuck in the wrong state when you load the game.  I've made it a habit now to load the game, let it run for a second, pause, then go check all the shutoffs to make sure they aren't stuck.  If they are, I change the levels on the battery to force the automation signal to change, then put it back and that gets the shutoffs unstuck.  When the shutoffs in the transformer flipper get stuck, the generators all just start running constantly and wasting power.

I'm pretty sure you don't have to keep them in perfect sync.  They may fluctuate and sometimes kick in your secondary generator for a moment when the output from the primary generator should be enough, but this will only happen occasionally and be temporary.  On average, their relative priorities will still be respected as long as all transformer flippers have the same ratio of transformer output to storage batteries.  Otherwise, one set of storage batteries will hog the power and stay full or nearly full most of the time while the other one struggles to keep up.

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@Gamers Handbook I've been encountering the bug you described in the followup video, where power shutoffs will be bugged on reload to be open state even when enabled by automation.

Has any new bug reports been submitted on this topic? I can create one if you don't want to revive this, as I feel it's important enough to be worth referencing your findings.

I've also compacted your design in that video to a 4x5 design that includes the error correction, I can post it if you're interested.

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On 2019/12/15 at 12:29 AM, crypticorb said:

@Gamers Handbook I've been encountering the bug you described in the followup video, where power shutoffs will be bugged on reload to be open state even when enabled by automation.

Has any new bug reports been submitted on this topic? I can create one if you don't want to revive this, as I feel it's important enough to be worth referencing your findings.

I've also compacted your design in that video to a 4x5 design that includes the error correction, I can post it if you're interested.

It's easy to fix the bug. I find that every gate have a delay of 0.1s, and if u add a buffer gate to the true side. Making their delay become balance, and the bug disappear. Pic 1 as an example. Pic 2 is the design I creently use. Flipping 40% less often

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17 minutes ago, nakomaru said:

As the bug is understood, you have merely not encountered it with your design. It is understood to happen when a switch is triggered to green at the same frame as a reload. So it won't matter if you delay it by 0.1s or 0s.

I was actually starting to think that it has to do with me choosing a new printable from the printing pod right after load while the game is still paused.  I've started letting it run for a second before doing so and it seems like it's working.  I think it is because certain things like printing from the pod or placing wires or pipes that cause existing ones to join seem to cause a 0.1 second advance in the game even when it is paused.

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18 hours ago, ForTheQueen said:

It's easy to fix the bug. I find that every gate have a delay of 0.1s, and if u add a buffer gate to the true side. Making their delay become balance, and the bug disappear. Pic 1 as an example. Pic 2 is the design I creently use. Flipping 40% less often

I tested your design, and it is still afflicted by the same bug, delaying by 0.1s makes zero difference.

The source of the problem has nothing to do with automation, it's the power shutoffs getting locked in an enabled state but are still open. The only way to break them out of this state is to cut off the green enable signal being sent to them.

In a battery flipper, when a smart battery gets drained after a charge/discharge cycle, it will send a green signal continuously until it receives enough charge to exceed its charged threshold. Since the power shutoff is stuck open despite being enabled, the battery will never receive any energy, permalocking the flipper. The only way to break out of this catch22 that I can think of is a daily toggle on a double NOT gate with a clock. Since there's no automated way to have an error state monitoring system that can correct these problems automatically, this is the best we have for now.

 

 

One possible method I've been tinkering with is to have the circuit automatically reset itself via a filter gate set to an incredibly high delay, taken off the battery output. The exact delay amount would depend on the circuit connected to it. If the battery remains discharged for too long, it would trigger the filter gate, forcing the circuit to toggle states. My WIP setup currently has problems if the power supply is cut off or if the circuit has a very very long discharge cycle, but I'm working on it.

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3 hours ago, crypticorb said:

I tested your design, and it is still afflicted by the same bug, delaying by 0.1s makes zero difference.

The source of the problem has nothing to do with automation, it's the power shutoffs getting locked in an enabled state but are still open. The only way to break them out of this state is to cut off the green enable signal being sent to them.

In a battery flipper, when a smart battery gets drained after a charge/discharge cycle, it will send a green signal continuously until it receives enough charge to exceed its charged threshold. Since the power shutoff is stuck open despite being enabled, the battery will never receive any energy, permalocking the flipper. The only way to break out of this catch22 that I can think of is a daily toggle on a double NOT gate with a clock. Since there's no automated way to have an error state monitoring system that can correct these problems automatically, this is the best we have for now.

 

 

One possible method I've been tinkering with is to have the circuit automatically reset itself via a filter gate set to an incredibly high delay, taken off the battery output. The exact delay amount would depend on the circuit connected to it. If the battery remains discharged for too long, it would trigger the filter gate, forcing the circuit to toggle states. My WIP setup currently has problems if the power supply is cut off or if the circuit has a very very long discharge cycle, but I'm working on it.

In fact I have three ways to solve the problem. One is to give a constant fix flipping signal. for example, when u using a 10kj small battery, a 4.8s flipping working fine, and it's a 2x4 design which is even smaller than the 4k transformer when u use it vertically, upper part of pic 1 show them. If you want it to be able to support more than 2kw, just decrease the flipping rate or increase the battery size. Another one is the example I show to you. Bug will only be possible to occur when u just build it up. But it is ok, u just need to change the signal manually and it will work fine afterward. The solution in fact have test by me and many people which show it's a solution. Both solution solve the problem. And the third one is by using two memory toggle. It work like example 2, but will hault after a power failure. So I won't suggest the third solution.

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1 hour ago, ForTheQueen said:

In fact I have three ways to solve the problem. One is to give a constant fix flipping signal. for example, when u using a 10kj small battery, a 4.8s flipping working fine, and it's a 2x4 design which is even smaller than the 4k transformer when u use it vertically, upper part of pic 1 show them. If you want it to be able to support more than 2kw, just decrease the flipping rate or increase the battery size. Another one is the example I show to you. Bug will only be possible to occur when u just build it up. But it is ok, u just need to change the signal manually and it will work fine afterward. The solution in fact have test by me and many people which show it's a solution. Both solution solve the problem. And the third one is by using two memory toggle. It work like example 2, but will hault after a power failure. So I won't suggest the third solution.

I was also thinking of a constant time flip but it isn't perfect because if the rate of power flowing in isn't enough then it won't charge up the battery, but that shouldn't really be a problem in practice I'm thinking.  I suppose a small battery does save a tile of space but has more runoff and heat.  Still probably negligible though.

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