Advantages to using Transformers

[mistrbushido]

It might be obvious to use transformers for power distribution, but somehow I can't see any advantages besides overload protection. If I plan my circuits carefully, I can just hook up consumers to a simple generator and smart battery circuit, and just create another circuit just before consumption exceeds 1kW. What are the advantages in creating a central power station with transformers?

[Coolthulhu]

You pretty much need a central wire if you're using solar. Central wire helps with temperature management, because all the polluters are away from the consumers. Steam power is too big to be used near consumers and too unreliable without magma or tuners.

Smart coal is fine for most of the game, but nowadays I always go for the "super sustainable" achievement. Solar helps because otherwise it's only hamster wheels for literally 200 cycles.

[psusi]

Beyond your first few low power, low duty cycle machines, it becomes impractical to have a bunch of isolated circuits with a ( presumably coal ) generator on each one.  You start to find that you need to keep NG generators close to the NG vent, hydrogen generators near a hydrogen vent or oxygen maker, petrol gen near the petrol or ethanol refinery, and such, and you want them all to feed at least a dozen different low power circuits scattered all over.  That's when you either set up a heavy watt wire backbone with transformers feeding all of the smaller load circuits, or use the transformer flipper to avoid heavy watt wire and keep one main plain wire backbone with sub stations scattered all over distributing power to loads and balance the priority of your various power plants to make effective use of the different fuel supplies given their different availability.

[SharraShimada]

Heavy wires need junctions through walls. Junctions transfer heat. Bad idea.

Small wires go through walls. And they have no decor penalty. 

2 very good reasons to not use heavy and heavy conductive, whenever possible.

[psusi]

5 minutes ago, SharraShimada said:

Heavy wires need junctions through walls. Junctions transfer heat. Bad idea.

Small wires go through walls. And they have no decor penalty. 

2 very good reasons to not use heavy and heavy conductive, whenever possible.

Indeed, that's why I love the transformer flipper concept.  Though non conductive regular wire does have a small decor penalty.

[KittenIsAGeek]

15 hours ago, mistrbushido said:

What are the advantages in creating a central power station with transformers?

You don't necessarily need a central power station.  However, transformers let you mix and match power input and output, making it easy to distribute your power.  Rather than building a generator/battery pair for each 1kw or 2kw stretch of wire, you can simply add another transformer to your grid.  

 

For example, lets say that I have two hydrogen generators set up.  They produce 800 kW of power each and are connected to some heavi-watt wire. (You don't have to do it this way, its just an example).  Then, connected to that heavi-watt wire, I've got six small transformers, each distributing power to around 1 kW of consumers.  

Each of the lines connected to transformers sees intermittent use, but the potential exists for each transformer to pull its full 1 kW of power if everything turns on at once.  So the peak total power draw can, potentially, hit 6 kW (1 kW from each of 6 transformers).  However, the average combined power draw is only 200 kW per line for 1200 kW across all six.  

The two generators can easily keep up with 1200 kW, as they produce a combined 1600 kW of power.  Since each generator is also connected to a smart battery, there's enough stored power to keep circuits from browning out should the total draw go above 1600 kW.

 

In your post, the setup you described would need a generator and battery for each line.  Here you only have to worry about two generators.  You can build them next to each other -- perhaps put them in a room with an engineering station and bump their output to 2400 kW (1200 each).  As you develop your base, add a transformer for each new circuit.  As your base's power demands go up, add another generator to the main line.  This way you don't have generators sitting idle on rarely used lines, reducing the total number of generators you need. 

 

Note: You can also do this with battery switching, but that's described in other posts and I'm not going into it here.

[mistrbushido]

5 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

However, transformers let you mix and match power input and output, making it easy to distribute your power.  Rather than building a generator/battery pair for each 1kw or 2kw stretch of wire, you can simply add another transformer to your grid.  

I just came to a point where this became relevant. I currently have 4 separate circuits, each with a single coal generator and smart battery. I have built up excess hydrogen from an electrolyzer, and wanted to use the excess for power. I wanted the hydrogen generator to distribute power across each of the four circuits, but realized I could only do it with transformers. So now I see the appeal for centralized power, even more so after discovering two nat gas vents.

[Coolthulhu]

9 hours ago, SharraShimada said:

Heavy wires need junctions through walls. Junctions transfer heat.

Have one side of the junction sit in proper vacuum. This way you can have a perfectly isolated steam chamber, oil boiler and whatnot.

[Xenologist]

Like some of the people said above me, the transformers are useful when making separate lines with a main power grid. Transformers are the key to saving dupe time and labor when set up properly.

[caffeinated21]

On 12/16/2019 at 3:29 PM, Coolthulhu said:

Have one side of the junction sit in proper vacuum. This way you can have a perfectly isolated steam chamber, oil boiler and whatnot.

They made this harder when they required the ‘terminals’ be dug out to build the junction box. Means you need to actually pump the vacuum instead of just diagonal building it 

[Soulwind]

On 12/16/2019 at 8:00 AM, psusi said:

Indeed, that's why I love the transformer flipper concept.  Though non conductive regular wire does have a small decor penalty.

What's the transformer flipper concept?

[psusi]

1 minute ago, Soulwind said:

What's the transformer flipper concept?