Switching battery issues

[Crimsontide]

I've been trying to work in a switching battery setup (mostly because running heavy watt wire is horrendously ugly and difficult) but there is an issue.  All the setups I've seen have issues, in that when they switch there is a small chance of a 'short' (ie. generators connected directly to consumers).

This stems from the simple fact that there is a small delay (1 game tick I think) on a 'not' gate when switching states.  This leaves a short (1 tick?) period where there is either a short, or a dead line (no batteries connected).

All the setups I've seen online all have this problem as well.

The thing is, I cannot find a simple way to rectify this.  Any solution I've come up with would require a surprising number of gates to compensate (making building these things everywhere difficult).

Anyone come up with a reliable/compact way to build a switching battery?

And on the topic of switching batteries, any way to do load balancing in a push/pull system that isn't a giant mess of transformers?

[nakomaru]

Use a ribbon reader on the positive signal to match the delay of the not gate on the negative signal. If you use a timer you will also avoid the stuck-on-load shutoff bug, and it won't matter which end is which.

Regarding load balance, I think you are asking about how to make isolated power stations drain in a preferential order. Transformer drain order is done in the order that the transformers are built, with the oldest drained first. So if you build two big power stations then you can build like 6 transformers on your solar power station then 6 transformers on your nat gas station, and if you charge your batteries in small increments most of the power will be drained from your solar station first.

More transformers and smaller increments is better. The reason is because you can charge your entire battery in one frame with enough transformers in your solar station, which means the lower priority transformers in your nat gas station aren't used.

[Crimsontide]

I didn't know ribbon readers worked like that.  Thank-you, that really makes things simple.

[nakomaru]

By the way, we used to use AND/OR gates for that same purpose, so if you are not there on the tech tree you can use those instead. But these are (insignificantly) smaller.

[Crimsontide]

Good to know.

[FIXBUGFIXBUGFIX]

[Crimsontide]

I appreciate the response, but if a ribbon reader has the same delay as a not gate, wouldn't that be the far easier (and more compact) choice?  I'm not sure what advantage your solution would have.

[TheMule]

2 hours ago, Crimsontide said:

I appreciate the response, but if a ribbon reader has the same delay as a not gate, wouldn't that be the far easier (and more compact) choice?  I'm not sure what advantage your solution would have.

Have a look at this: 

 

[psusi]

The advice I've seen on the forums before was to use an OR gate on the other site to replicate the same delay as the NOT gate, but I guess a ribbon reader would do the same thing.  I've never bothered since, while it is annoying to see occasional split second brownouts, it hasn't really caused me any pain.

[Sheo]

Old school setup of myself, still working for me in every game, no pauses on charging or switching

[Yunru]

On 11/27/2020 at 2:48 AM, Crimsontide said:

I didn't know ribbon readers worked like that.  Thank-you, that really makes things simple.

It's any gate that does it, they all have a 1-tick delay. 

You could use an AND or an OR gate for a lower-tech solution. 

[Occam Blazer]

I have a couple configurations for the demand side (gonna switch to ribbon readers 'cause I frequently forget to change the filter gate). Distribution is pretty much vanilla Gamer's Handbook.

 

I have a special solution for supplying power to bunker doors - by far the highest sudden demand. While solar power is up (doors open and it's daytime) I charge two banks of 9 jumbo batteries. When the scanner array signals doors opening or closing one bank of batteries dumps power onto the grid for 50 seconds.

Check out the bottom two banks here. The top two banks save power for when solar is down.

[TheMule]

11 hours ago, occamrazor said:

I have a couple configurations for the demand side (gonna switch to ribbon readers 'cause I frequently forget to change the filter gate). Distribution is pretty much vanilla Gamer's Handbook.

I think I'm going to switch to ribbon readers too. Interesting. I usually do this:

[psusi]

18 hours ago, occamrazor said:

I have a special solution for supplying power to bunker doors - by far the highest sudden demand. While solar power is up (doors open and it's daytime) I charge two banks of 9 jumbo batteries. When the scanner array signals doors opening or closing one bank of batteries dumps power onto the grid for 50 seconds.

Why bother with all of that?  Just build a few more generators to burn fuel during peak demand.  It's easier to store fuel than energy, and idle generators don't waste power or generate heat like charged batteries do.

[nakomaru]

7 hours ago, TheMule said:

I think I'm going to switch to ribbon readers too. Interesting. I usually do this:

See first response for a fix to stuck-on-load power shutoffs also.

[TheMule]

11 hours ago, nakomaru said:

See first response for a fix to stuck-on-load power shutoffs also.

It has never happened to me since they said they fixed the bug. And I use this kind of grid in every colony.

[psusi]

44 minutes ago, TheMule said:

It has never happened to me since they said they fixed the bug. And I use this kind of grid in every colony.

If you use the gate to match the delay maybe.  With only the not gate, I got a stuck switch on load last night.  Maybe I'll try adding ribbon readers to get rid of that annoyance.

[Crimsontide]

6 hours ago, psusi said:

If you use the gate to match the delay maybe.  With only the not gate, I got a stuck switch on load last night.  Maybe I'll try adding ribbon readers to get rid of that annoyance.

So far no issues with ribbon readers myself.  Though it hasn't been that long since I switched them over.

[nakomaru]

17 hours ago, TheMule said:

It has never happened to me since they said they fixed the bug. And I use this kind of grid in every colony.

There are no such statements on any of the bug reports I've seen (e.g. here). Was it in patch notes?

10 hours ago, Crimsontide said:

So far no issues with ribbon readers myself.  Though it hasn't been that long since I switched them over.

There's no issues with ribbon readers, and the bug does not come from desynced circuits.

The problem occurs when a power shutoff switches to green one tick after the save occurs, games loaded from that save will have that power shutoff be stuck in the off position until it goes red then green again. This isn't a problem with a timer, but will be a failure in a smart-battery driven switch (the battery and shutoff will remain in a bugged green-state). See above report for details.

[Addendum] Indeed, it still fails, per file on bug report:

I also reproduced it from the saving side with the current version, with synced circuits:

 Bug is absolutely still present. Solution is still here.

[TheMule]

3 hours ago, nakomaru said:

There are no such statements on any of the bug reports I've seen (e.g. here). Was it in patch notes?

Sorry I don't have a patch number for you.

I've been using @Gamers Handbook's grid in every base since I've discovered it. I know I was using it in March, for sure, so I must have discovered between September and March (most likely around Xmas).

I do remember I had the problem with stuck shutoffs a lot. I had to check all batterie flippers every time I loaded a game. It was so annoying that I thought to switch back to a standard grid. But it didn't last for long, after a while someone said they had fixed the bug, and it never happened again since then. That's probably 1500 hours for me, in multiple colonies, using the design I've shown or many variations of it (but always with a NOT gate and a buffer gate set to 0.1s).

It's not easy to isolate stuff like this. Of course I keep experimenting with mods and sometime I permanently add one to my 'standard' collection. I don't keep track when that happens for each mod.

I do have Better Automation Overlay (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1878896484) by Aze and the Stock Bug Fix (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1967921388) by Stephen installed. They don't seem to mention the shutoff bug tho.

Edit: I have 58 mods I've subscribed too, I'm using probably 2/3 of them, most are about maps, traits, dup selection and the like. I don't use many mods that change the mechanics of the game.

[nakomaru]

That question was a bit rhetorical by the end of all the edits. Even if there were such a patch note it would be in error.

I've attached a bugged save file with your preferred design.

TheMuleBug.sav

[MinhPham]

Any compact design for regular wire into heavy watt ?

[nakomaru]

1 hour ago, MinhPham said:

Any compact design for regular wire into heavy watt ?

Use between 0.6s to 1.0 second timers for about 20kW capacity. In practice you can't go much over your battery capacity per second (=20kJ/s) even if you cycle faster than once per second. Change to double Smart Batteries or Jumbo Batteries for a safe 40kW capacity.

[psusi]

I don't play with any mods and it does feel like the shutoffs get stuck on load much less often than they used to, but it does still happen.

[Dan Thorpe]

On 11/27/2020 at 2:21 AM, nakomaru said:

Use a ribbon reader on the positive signal to match the delay of the not gate on the negative signal. If you use a timer you will also avoid the stuck-on-load shutoff bug, and it won't matter which end is which.

 

First off apologies for this utter noob lack of understanding.  This is quite literally the first time I have tried to use switching batteries in over 1200 hours in the game.  But I've copied this design for the consumer side, at least it looks like it works.  But I cant for the life of me figure out how you use this for the generator side with a transformer setup.

Would you be able to reply with a pic for an example of a main grid using basic wire, and how to use this for some coal / hydro generators?

Would also be great to see the same for a consumer side in how you pull power from the main grid just to make sure what I did was actually right.

Thanks!