Electricity Help

[demmeister]

I've been playing for a while now and have a fairly stable base. Plenty of natural gas from multiple geysers, some excess hydrogen from Oxygen generation and three oil geysers. I've got to the surface and started scanning space with a view to sending out some rockets at some point. However, when incoming meteorites trigger my bunker doors to close, there's a power spike and things start shutting down.

I currently have 6 natural gas generators, 3 petroleum generators and 1 hydrogen generator (as well as a load of solar panels). All are well stocked with resources and controlled by smart batteries so they only run when needed.

My layout is to have all my generators and batteries on a main circuit of heavy-watt wire then whenever there's something to be powered, I place a power transformer (or large depending on requirements) and attach things to that normal-wire circuit until the 1kW limit.

However, I've just read this: https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/93455-electricity-tutorial

I tried to follow some of the instructions and ended up with a few normal-wire circuits off of power transformers, essentially running four times as much stuff from the one transformer. However, I don't know why this is better or if I'm saving power doing it. The latest one I set up, I guess there's too much on the circuit because the batteries can't charge fast enough so some stuff doesn't run all the time.

I'm just a bit clueless when it comes to this level of power management. I'd love to know how to set things up more efficiently so I can save power and avoid spikes on the circuit which end up shutting things down.

If anyone can help explain things to me in a way that makes sense and makes it clear what the benefits of certain layouts are, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

[Yunru]

The power Spikes would be the bunker doors. Powered doors only draw power when opening or closing, iirc. 

[Sasza22]

Seems like the bunker doors are causing a problem but it`s weird. With 3 petrol gens and 6 nat gas gens you should have enough power to handle that. Unless you got the whole surface covered with doors. In this case make sue you only use the ones that need to open (for rockets and solar panels) nd leave the rest closed. The ones for rokets could be left closed as well until you are ready to launch one.

With that much power production i`m not sure what can drain so much of it on regular that batteries aren`t chargning fully. If you could post a screenshot of your base shwoing most power hungry stuff like aquatuners or transit tubes it would be helpful.

[Steve8]

4 hours ago, demmeister said:

I tried to follow some of the instructions and ended up with a few normal-wire circuits off of power transformers, essentially running four times as much stuff from the one transformer. However, I don't know why this is better or if I'm saving power doing it.

None of that nonsense is ever needed. You can easily exceed the limit of a wire just by realizing that not everything on it will necessarily run at the same time. So you can have 3-4 kW worth of machines on a 1kW wire as long as you don't consume all that at the same time.

[Occam Blazer]

On 2/27/2021 at 8:32 AM, demmeister said:

when incoming meteorites trigger my bunker doors to close, there's a power spike and things start shutting down.

Bunker doors draw a lot of power. Set up a bank of jumbo batteries to store power for when the bunker doors operate.

To figure out how many batteries you need take the number of doors you have:

• One door draws 120 watts for at most 45 seconds (when continuously powered) wiki
• That's 5,400 joules (watts X seconds) per bunker door per operation
• A Jumbo Battery stores 40,000 joules, so one battery stores enough power to operate 7.4 doors when fully charged wiki
• Set up two banks - one for opening and one for closing

Nine jumbo batteries will store enough juice to operate doors spanning the entire map.

One thing to watch out for: If all your generation is controlled by smart batteries then the jumbo batteries will never fully charge since smart batteries shut off at 20kj and smrt batteries can store 40kj. Just make sure you have enough always-on generation - like solar - to fully charge the jumbos.

 

[demmeister]

13 hours ago, Steve8 said:

None of that nonsense is ever needed. You can easily exceed the limit of a wire just by realizing that not everything on it will necessarily run at the same time. So you can have 3-4 kW worth of machines on a 1kW wire as long as you don't consume all that at the same time.

Is there a point to this nonsense though? The one thing that linked article fails to mention is why I would do what they're describing. I'm guessing there's a reason otherwise why would they bother writing such a long article 

10 hours ago, occamrazor said:

Bunker doors draw a lot of power. Set up a bank of jumbo batteries to store power for when the bunker doors operate.

To figure out how many batteries you need take the number of doors you have:

• One door draws 120 watts for at most 45 seconds (when continuously powered) wiki
• That's 5,400 joules (watts X seconds) per bunker door per operation
• A Jumbo Battery stores 40,000 joules, so one battery stores enough power to operate 7.4 doors when fully charged wiki
• Set up two banks - one for opening and one for closing

Nine jumbo batteries will store enough juice to operate doors spanning the entire map.

 

This is very helpful. I'm going to set this up and see how it goes 

[Yunru]

27 minutes ago, demmeister said:

Is there a point to this nonsense though? The one thing that linked article fails to mention is why I would do what they're describing. I'm guessing there's a reason otherwise why would they bother writing such a long article 

Yes there definitely is. What Steve fails to point out is that unless you've automation preventing consumers from running at the same time, you run the risk of them doing exactly that, and thus overloading your wiring. 

 

Branching off with transformers means that if you exceed the peak, that branch will simply brown-out, rather than overload. 

[Steve8]

2 hours ago, Yunru said:

Branching off with transformers means that if you exceed the peak, that branch will simply brown-out, rather than overload. 

That post wasn't just about branching off with transformers. That was only briefly mentioned at the beginning. It's not really a tutorial about the electric grid, but cheesing things with switching batteries and running multiple kWs over a single normal wire. That's something you can do, but it's not the way things are supposed to work. It's something for advanced players, but not for people who struggle even with a normal grid.

So saying "none" was a bit overstated. The beginning under "power grid theory" is relevant. The rest can be ignored.

 

The way the power grid is intended is that you have a heavy watt backbone connecting the producers.You place batteries to buffer power and switch generator prioritiy. And then you branch off with transformers to consumers. Even then you don't necessarily need automation on the consumer side for a long time. Eyeballing things can be fine. You know how often certain machines are used and can spread them over different wires accordingly. There are just some things you know will be very rarely used. Or they only activate for a brief moment now and then like many autosweepers. And then there things you know will run a lot like aquatuners or electrolyzers where you don't want to put more on a wire than they can really handle.

With the bunker doors you have the issue that they only run rarely, but when they do they consume a lot of power at the same time because all of them open or close together. At least in case of a meteor storm

[mathmanican]

8 hours ago, Steve8 said:

The way the power grid is intended is.. ship

This is all opinion.  What is fact is how the power grid works in the game (in its current state, which could change with any update). 

Key things to pay attention to are what generates power, what consumes power, how wire load is computed, etc...  From there, the sky is the limit. If you come up with a fun design that uses the mechanics of the game to do something amazing, great!   If it makes other people mad and claim you are using things in an unintended way, remember that they can have an opinion. Their opinions do not change the facts about the game.  

@demmeister The point to the tutorial is how to deal with extremely large power loads, and ignore the 20kW limit and/or completely ignore heavy watt wire.  One option is to build a 50kW backbone,which is probably more than enough for most people. Another option is to learn how to separate power grids, use the game's rules around power, and send all power through regular wires.  If that sounds fun, then you'll find a lot of information on the forums relate to this.  If it sounds gimmicky, then skip it all.  

[Steve8]

4 hours ago, mathmanican said:

This is all opinion.  What is fact is how the power grid works in the game (in its current state, which could change with any update). 

This childish BS again 

Heavy-watt backbone + transformers is obviously the way Klei intends most people to play. There is nothing to discuss about that. Same as with other mechanics that are meant to be the norm. The game mechanics allow other solutions and things in some cases. But just because Klei doesn't patch them out doesn't mean they are intended to be standard gameplay for most people. As advanced options for experienced players they are fine, but it's questionable to recommend that kind of stuff for newer players.

[nakomaru]

5 hours ago, Steve8 said:

it's questionable to recommend that kind of stuff for newer players

Far more questionable to tell a player, "Stop playing with that, that's not intended for you." when they are the ones asking about it to begin with.

[demmeister]

It's worth saying that I'm not what I would class as a new player.

I'm looking for advanced techniques to make life easier in the end game as I explore space and was really trying to find out if there was a way I could put my power to better use than just:

Power Generators -> Heavy Watt Wire -> Power Transformers -> Consumers

In the same way that a SPOM is better than just using individual electrolyzers and door compressors are better than en masse storage tanks.

It sounds like that's probably not an option. Other than being able to use 1kW wire to run more than 1kW which I don't need because I'm happy limiting my 1kW circuits to 1kW of consumers.

However, I have now set up batteries to help with my bunker door issue and that seems to be taking care of things so thank you for the advice on that one 

[babba]

I normally have a 20K cable in a square ( with many zig zag diversions running to everywhere ) for a whole big map, running as "Bootcable". Attached to the colony wide bootcable, I have 20K "Subnetworks" via 5x4K transformers.

Each subnetwork has often their own power generation, as as example 20K power petroleum generators and 20K consumers within such a subnet. The sub networks can take boot or emergency power from the colony wide boot cable, via transformers, to (re)start subnetwork machinery like pumps etc.

The bootcable is hooked up to 20K dupe bikes and is the life insurance for the colony. The boot cable can also have an 5x4K transformers (serial) attached "Boot Support Subnet" like 20K of solar panels.

The end goal on a big map is always for me to put most machinery and batteries in a big stacked rockets steam room, which can result in 100K-200K machinery consumption in there, its then tricky to get 5-10 20K subnet cables in to the steam room without leaking the heat out.

Over time I try to reduce the amount of subnet cables going in to the steam room and I try to put also most power production in to the steam room (ng petro generators etc.).However, inside the steam room I also follow my cabling methodology.

Nothing can overload and if there is somewhere power missing ( seeing dupes hopping on to bikes, boot cable power load increasing ) then I know that the power producers in a subnetwork have failed or that the boot cable is dead ( mega panic case ! ).

This favorite power grid playstyle has developed over time, due to past failed colonies of mine, where it was impossible for me to power reboot important colony stuff due to insane high machinery power requests.

Thats how I play 

[Occam Blazer]

9 hours ago, demmeister said:

However, I have now set up batteries to help with my bunker door issue and that seems to be taking care of things so thank you for the advice on that one 

One thing to watch out for (and I'll edit the original reply): If all your generation is controlled by smart batteries then the jumbo batteries will never fully charge since smart batteries shut off at 20kj and smrt batteries can store 40kj. Just make sure you have enough always-on generation - like solar - to fully charge the jumbos.

I also like to use automation to isolate the banks of batteries so they only draw when the doors operate. A few transformers (in and out to control flow) and a power cutoff (to on the "out" side)  wired into your space scanners should do the trick.

[Pyrex042]

On 3/1/2021 at 2:52 PM, occamrazor said:

One thing to watch out for (and I'll edit the original reply): If all your generation is controlled by smart batteries then the jumbo batteries will never fully charge since smart batteries shut off at 20kj and smrt batteries can store 40kj. Just make sure you have enough always-on generation - like solar - to fully charge the jumbos.

That's only true if the Smart and Jumbo batteries are on the same circuit.  To prevent excessive load you can do something like Smart Battery -> Transformer -> Jumbo Battery  -> Bunker Door.

[Occam Blazer]

29 minutes ago, Pyrex042 said:

That's only true if the Smart and Jumbo batteries are on the same circuit.  To prevent excessive load you can do something like Smart Battery -> Transformer -> Jumbo Battery  -> Bunker Door.

Good point. And that's a good way to isolate the battery bank.

transformer -> jumbos -> transformer -> shutoff -> main grid

Enable the shutoff for 45 seconds when the doors operate. I use rising and falling edge detectors on the space scanners.

[TheMule]

On 2/27/2021 at 11:53 PM, Occam Blazer said:

To figure out how many batteries you need take the number of doors you have:

• One door draws 120 watts for at most 45 seconds (when continuously powered) wiki
• That's 5,400 joules (watts X seconds) per bunker door per operation
• A Jumbo Battery stores 40,000 joules, so one battery stores enough power to operate 7.4 doors when fully charged wiki
• Set up two banks - one for opening and one for closing

Adding to that:

the standard map is 384x256. You can fit 64 bunker doors in 256 tiles. Each door is 120W, so 7,680W for all 64 doors when operating. Times 45s it's 345.6kJ, o 8.64 (9) jumbo batteries for one operation. Closing is a little faster, so probably 17 batteries would do for a full close/open cycle.

But I'd suggest battery bank(s) only if you have either solar or (uncontrolled) geothermal.

If you're using any kind of fuel, you might find it easier to just store a suitable amount of it and build 8kW worth of generators. 4 petroleum generators or 10 nat gas/hydrogen ones. Storing 750kJ (rounding up for a good measure) in fuel is easier than a battery bank (and there's no runoff). It's 750kg of petroleum (a single reservoir contains 5t) or (about) 85 kg of nat gas or 94kg of hydrogen (a reservoir is 150 kg).

Despite the power demand, the total energy isn't that much. Meteor showers are relatively rare all considered. Possibly a single geyers (nat gat or hydrogen) is enough, provided that you store the gas to account for dormancy time.