Power Grid [Modified Sine Wave Inverter] [All Battery Switcher Designs] [Oscillators] [Battery Engine MK2] [Power Shutoff Bug Fix] [Capacitors and Relays]

[BLACKBERREST3]

Power Grid

I finally figured out all the weird stuff that happens with power shutoffs, batteries, transformers, and all the different ways to combine them. This is a guide to help provide clarity and show off some builds while I was testing different mechanics for this game. And If I ever forget how to play the game again I can just come back here 🙃

 

Pssst...you can skip to the end for a recap and blueprint downloads section, this guide is way too long and wordy 😈

Relevant Info

 

 

 

 

Saw this after I already built the inverter. similar concept.

 

My previous work on battery switching and transformers.

 

@FIXBUGFIXBUGFIX Founder of the concept for battery switching.

 

 

 

Design Progression

 

The OG

The original design used a single battery as the primary i/o. When battery requests power, it swaps from charging to discharging on each pair of power shutoffs. Very simple, but effective and cheap.

 

 

Battery Switcher 2.0

This new design allows us to independently set the i/o for each battery. I will refer to the battery that is directly connected to the shutoff as the primary and the other battery isolated on one leg of the not-not latch will be the secondary.

Not-Not Latch = Poor man's memory toggle.

Primary = Battery A

Secondary = Battery B

The primary will always supersede the secondary when requesting power. When the primary is full, there will only be a state change when the secondary is requesting power. The not-not latch remembers the state it was previously in when toggled.

The i/o i have it set for at 5/20 and 80/100 will make it state change faster the less juice is in the system. The opposite is also true where the more juice you have the less it will state change. You can set the i/o to whatever you need.

 

 

I've also built a mirror version where the primary and secondary are flipped in case you want to build from L-to-R OR R-to-L OR. They both function the exact same way, it's just for aesthetics.

 

same wiring for both

 

 

Battery Switcher 2.1

Disclaimer: Read the relevant info section on "Introducing the Pulsed Power Grid" and watch the "PSA Power Shutoff Bug" video before continuing the next section.

When you combine normal battery switchers or even the 2.0 version with any consumer (pulsing OR non-pulsing), there will be some bleed back into the system because the shutoffs flip at the same time [More accurately, they both have a green signal on the same tick] causing a momentary pulse leakage on the producing line. Here is an example of this in action (or an attempt as i pause and unpause a hundred times).

To make matters worse, there is a bug or should I say "Feature" as a side effect of battery switching in general. This is the mechanic @blakemw describes in This Post, specifically in the "Why instead of Battery Switcher?"  section. To explain a different way, when you have increased i/o speed from your switchers. The power shutoffs don't have enough time to get out of what I call the "Red Zone" Here is a pic of what it looks like.

Even though the power shutoff is off, it will be stuck in this red state until it switches again. This will accumulate overload time from the consumer line (right side) either when it is consuming or pulsing until we toggle it out of this state. Through testing I have found that adding filters give the power shutoffs some room to breathe so they don't trigger this state as often.

 

 

3-Battery Switcher

This got me thinking of an alternate way to add filters without the need to decrease i/o speed. So I added a third battery as a buffer to the mix. Here is the logic table for the 3-Battery Switcher. This Build Gives the power shutoffs a little more room to breathe than a 2 battery switcher.

Input        Output (inverse of input)

A B C       A B C

1 1 0        0 0 1

1 0 1        0 1 0

0 1 1        1 0 0

 

 

Oscillators

Took me a while to find a use for these.

Any time you have circular logic, the game processes that logic at 1 tick / second. A single tick is 0.2s.

1-Not

The simplest one to get and almost everyone has gotten this by accident. 1 tick/s speeds.

 

NOT-NOT Oscillator

This adds an extra tick to the cycle for each not you have before looping back to the first one. Each not flop takes 1 tick of time.

 

Logic is fairly simple

Not Gates = flops signals with one another at the games default tick rate.

Filter-Buffer = Delays the oscillation on either green or red flop.

XOR = acts to flop the signal from red to green when one input is always on.

Not-Gate to XOR = If EVEN number of NOT floppers are built, set the left switch to OFF. If ODD number of floppers are built, set the switch to ON. This is showcased in the video above.

 

Not - Filter - Buffer & Tick Delay

All gates take 1 tick of time or 1 tick delay before they will process an incoming signal. If an incoming signal is green and the output of a gate is red, it will remain red for 1 tick and turn green on the second tick. The same is also true of the inverse. If red, it will stay red for another tick when the gate detects a green signal. This is compounded with the following gates below.

Every +0.1s added is equivalent to 1 tick delay.

Filters = After initial 0.1s, filters 1 green tick in the cycle per +0.1s set on the filters time.

Buffers = After initial 0.1s, buffers 1 green tick per +0.1s set on the buffers time.

Not = Takes 1 tick of time to flop from green to red or red to green. If the length of the oscillation is flopping every tick, all not outputs will be all red or all green as you have shifted them all by 1 tick to match the delay from each other. You can see this in the video below.

 

Not gates will allow the same signal frequency to pass. If it ends in an odd number of not gates, the output will be the inverse of the incoming signal.

 

Memory & XOR

Albiet, more expensive, you can oscillate at 1 tick speeds with these too.

 

 

 

Modified Sine Wave Inverter

An inverter is used in circuitry and electronics to convert 12V/24V DC battery power into a stepped, approximated 120V/230V AC waveform. Using The NOT-NOT Oscillator together with a bunch of Batteries, Filters, and Not Gates, we can create the same thing in game! I'm starting to think this is less of an exploit and more of intended behavior at this point. This is way more ethical than farming oxygen deprived dupes for free water, and energy.

 

Inverter on a Pulsing Grid

This works on a pulsing grid set to [0.1 ON & 0.2 OFF]. If you increase the wave frequency on the inverter here, you will overload the wires as they need a full wave cycle to cool down after encountering the "Red Zone" as described in [2.1 Battery Switcher] section. The small video above makes it easy to see this happening. The filters are set to 0.3s for the incoming charge and filter-nots are 0.1s for the outgoing discharge. The filter-buffer I have going into the XOR is set to 0.1s/0.1s because that is the quickest the wave can complete a full cycle. You can reach peak efficiency by just removing the in-line buffer-filter, but I like how you can easily delay the cycle with them added. plus, any quicker than 1 full cycle will risk an overload, so this gives a .1s buffer to prevent that.

Inverter on a Non-Pulsing Grid

Here is where this really shines. We can do away with transformers all together. Just increase the wave frequency and you can power anything directly to consumers.

 

Quick and Dirty Fix

I branched the filters and nots and set it to 0.1s to get the right tick delay here. It makes the build cheaper. This will still work on a pulsing grid.

 

 

Using the other branches of the not gates, we can alternate charging and discharging batteries. This will not work on a pulsing grid, but it does eliminate the need to have a second automation create a second trailing wave.

 

 

Hidden Battery Switching Mechanics

Logic for 2 Batteries

In order to not have brownouts or leakage on the backbone, the rules are:

• One battery must always be discharging
• One battery must not charge and discharge at the same time

A = Shutoff to Incoming Charge on Battery 1

B = Shutoff to Outgoing Discharge on Battery 1

C = Shutoff to Incoming Charge on Battery 2

D = Shutoff to Outgoing Discharge on Battery 2

A B C D

1 0 0 1  - Initial state of Battery 1 charging and Battery 2 discharging

0 0 0 1 - Battery 1 is swapping from charge to discharge

0 1 0 1 - Battery 1 is done swapping.

0 1 0 0 - Battery 2 is swapping from discharge to charge

0 1 1 0 - Battery 2 is done swapping

0 1 0 0 - Battery 2 is swapping back to discharge

0 1 0 1 - Battery 2 is done swapping

0 0 0 1 - Battery 1 is swapping back to initial state

Loop

It takes 8 state changes to complete the cycle.

Logic for 3 Batteries

Using the same logic from the 3 battery switcher we get

E = Charge for Battery 3

F = Discharge for Battery 3

A B C D E F

0 1 0 1 1 0 - Battery 1 and 2 are discharging, Battery 3 is charging

0 1 0 0 0 0 - Battery 2 and 3 are swapping. 2 from discharge to charge and 3 from charge to discharge.

0 1 1 0 0 1 - Battery 2 and 3 are done swapping

0 0 0 0 0 1 - Battery 1 and 2 are swapping. 1 from discharge to charge and 2 from charge to discharge.

1 0 0 1 0 1 - Battery 1 and 2 are done swapping

0 0 0 1 0 0 - Battery 1 and 3 are swapping. 1 from charge to discharge and 3 from discharge to charge.

Loop

It takes only 6 cycles to complete this time.

Shutoff Exploit

If you've ever used a battery switcher before, you might've wondered why your machines kept turning off causing your dupes to lose interest in those tasks. Or maybe you've noticed that the small wire backbone you have flashes red every time it switches. This is the answer you've been looking for. If a pair of shutoffs for one battery are both green on the same tick, the game will calculate them as both being connected to the grid at the same. Same goes for if they are red on the same tick, they will cause your grid to be disconnected for one tick. So how do we use this to our advantage. Given what we know about delaying tick speed with gates we can shave off 1 tick for every swap we need to do in the cycle for our battery switchers.

New Logic for 2 Batteries

A B C D

1 0 0 1

0 1 1 0

Loop

We've eliminated the need to space out our swaps and now we can complete the cycle in only 2 state changes.

New Logic for 3 Batteries

A B C D E F

0 1 0 1 1 0

0 1 1 0 1 0

1 0 1 0 0 1

1 0 0 1 0 1

They all charge for 2 states and discharge for 2 states. Any pair of batteries will be charging or discharging while another pair of batteries are swapping. This all takes place within 4 game ticks.

Sidenote on Battery Switching Tick Speed

While you can swap at 1 tick speeds I've noticed that batteries would tend to drain unevenly and behave sporadically, so I opted for a 2 tick cycle where they stay green for 2 ticks and red for 2 ticks to keep all my builds more stable.

 

Battery Engines

Battery Engine MK1

first iterations

 Battery Engine MK2

Improved Design.

  Removed Unnecessary OR gates from video. Middle battery on 3 bat engine is offset by 1 tick from the other two pairs. Doesn't need Power Shutoff Fix if it is always cycling through different states.

 

 

Power Shutoff Fix V1

No guide to power builds would be complete without talking about the one bug that still plagues all of us to this day. The dreaded Power Shutoff Bug...

Through testing, adding filters alone to battery switchers does not fix the shutoff bug on save/reload.

Going off of my previous work and the fact that we actually have a wattage sensor now means we can finally have a fully automated way to detect and fix the shutoff bug. No clocks or other indirect mechanics needed.

Watt-Filter sensor = detects when there is no voltage on the consumer side for a variable amount of time.

Filters = Reduces bleed back to mains [or more accurately swap the shutoffs on the same tick]

Not-Not Latch = Remembers the state it was in when toggled

Not-And Rising Edge Detector = @biopon helped me with that a long time ago. Sends a 1-tick pulse when on. Only sends another pulse after it has been turned off and back on again. The Buffer is to make sure the pulse goes through the filters.

XOR gate =  isolates one leg of the not-not latch from the switcher shutoffs. It will toggle the shutoffs regardless of what state the non-not latch is in.

 

 

Battery Switcher 3.0

Fixed the tick timings for the battery switchers.

Battery Switcher 3.0 w/ and without Shutoff Bug Fix. Stress tested at 50/100 on both batteries was enough to handle 50Kw of constant consumption with 2 extra batteries attached. Any lower (like 45/100) or without 2 extra batteries and the draw caused brownouts of 1 out of the 52 lights AND all of them if you didn't include the two extras. 50Kw is just too much for 2 batteries alone.

 

 

Here is the cheapest you can get with one smart and one dumb battery + 2 Extras for constant 50Kw draw. i/o set to 70/100 to keep it balanced. buffer is there to keep right side draining a bit longer to also help with balance and branched not-filter is there for the right tick time. Wiring is mostly the same between all of them. It only changes to a higher rated wire if the load calls for it, backbone will always be small wire.

 

 

Other Builds and What-Nots Explained

 

Looping Transformers

A little bit more on looping transformers (@Gamers Handbook method of battery switching)

Battery A AND B Charge/Discharge at different rates when you loop. 1Kw is being divided to charge Battery A and every other battery on the backbone. So Battery A charges at 1Kw Divided by Total Amount of Batteries on Producer line. Another way to think about it is to add how much power your generators are producing with the total number of output side transformers you have on the same line.

T+G / Total Batteries = How fast Battery A charges

Throughput of transformer on the left = How fast Battery A AND B discharges to Battery C

This looping behavior can be a boon or curse on your grid depending on how you use it. For example if you were to build a Power Relay or Capacitor that pushes power down the line, you would not want to loop it back to the main backbone as that would limit throughput.

 

Remote Battery Level

If you build multiple modules of these miles away, they will charge/discharge at the same rate effectively syncing them together on the same backbone. You can remove the battery entirely and place a wattage sensor instead to do similar logic operations. From left to right we have a pulsing transformer that throttles total output to 1/3 of a transformer's efficiency [0.1s / 0.1s + 0.2s] at 333.33W, Middle is a single battery engine that is half of a transformers efficiency at 500W, and the third build is the full 1Kw throughput. This is used to have generators feeding switchers that are directly tied to your consumers without throttling them or even requiring you to build additional transformers between generators and consumers. This is built in parallel on your backbone with all the other generators.

 

 

Capacitors

Non-Pulsed 20Kw and 50Kw Capacitors (Small and Large Wire Variants)

The Large wire variants have the ability to feed consumers directly whereas the small wires act as a relay. They both stabilize output when needed. Benefits include being able to stockpile energy and dispersing all at once later.

 

 

Logic can be replaced by any other switcher variant.

 

Pulsing Relay

Has identical function to the capacitors when paired with a battery switcher of the same kind. Only difference is this one is able to be infinitely scaled to one battery switcher. I chose a block of 100 transformers for this example.

 

 

 

Only Pulsing will allow you to consume unlimited wattage on a given wire. If your goal was to have the most wattage consumed on a single piece of wire without overloading it, this is how you would do it.

 

 

The timer would have to be synced on all transformers to prevent overload. Two pulses on the same wire will always overload. This is covered in Pulsed Power Grid.

Efficiency for a pulsed transformer is given by this formula [ Time ON / (Time OFF + Time ON) ]

In our case, 1 large transformer is equivalent to 4000/3 or 1333.33 J/s. 1 small transformer is 1000/3 or 333 J/s. I've found only .1s ON .2s OFF is the only frequency that prevents overloads with battery switcher power shutoffs. You must pair Pulsing relays with a battery bank on the consumer end to have 100% downtime otherwise you will get a flickering light show.

 

Capacitor VS Pulsed Relay

Which is right for you?

Lets do a cost benefit analysis between the two since they do the same thing which is to push as much power as humanly possible from producers to consumers.

get ready for some rough math.

2000Kw / (4000Kw/3)  = 1.5 ratio of large transformers pulsed per 2 small non pulsed
365kg per additional large transformer to add
need 36 + 1.5 = 37.5 modules needed per 50Kw
(37.5 * 365kg) / (1000kg/T) = 13.6875T metal per 50Kw

One-Time Battery and transformer builld cost for non-pulse = 2260kg or .2260T
50Kw pulse recurring cost = 13.6875T
50Kw non pulse build = 8.1T + 2.175T = 10.275T
Pulse capacitor outpaces non-pulse capacitor by 3.4125T of metal every 50Kw
It is cheaper to build the non-pulse every time

on 1.9 off for 2 is (1.9 / 3.9) = .48718 efficiency
on for .1 off for .2 is (.1/.3) = 1/3 efficiency
even if we used a different pulse timer for the capacitor we would only get
.48718 / (1/3) = 1.46154 or 146.154% more power.
new ratio would be 2000Kw / (4000Kw * .48718) = 1.0263 ratio of large transformers pulsed per 2 small non pulsed
[ ( 36 + 1.0263 ) * 365kg / (1000kg/T) = 13.5146T
new 50Kw pulse recurring cost with better efficiency = 13.514.6T
thats a small difference of only 172.9Kg every 50Kw

I have a table included of all possible ratios up to 7s if you want to find and/or filter the data yourself. In google spreadsheets, just select all -> go to "format" -> "conditional formatting" -> and make a rule to highlight the range of values you are looking for.

0to7s ratio.xlsx

 

tldr; Non-Pulsed Capacitor is always cheaper to build

 

How to Grid?

Generators -> Battery Switchers -> Consumers

Battery Levels are wired in parallel to generators to handle automation

Battery Switchers or Engines are wired in parallel to other switchers/engines to handle consumers

Capacitors or transformers can be used to relay or stabilize power during peak load time

That's it. Just that simple.

 

Recap and Rules of the Grid

• You cannot charge a battery with another battery. There must always be a producer of some kind to charge batteries and a consumer to drain them otherwise batteries will sit idle losing power over time or just not having power at all.
• Batteries charge and drain in sync when being produced/consumed on the same line.
• When Battery Switching, if shutoffs are both green on the same tick, this will lead to consumer leakage. If the shutoffs are both red on the same tick, this will cause brownouts. 
• You can produce as much power on any wire without overload. Go nuts with Gens.
• Transformers are both a consumer and a producer. A pulsed transformer will be 1/3 as efficient to a normal transformer running at 100% when pairing with battery switchers at 0.1s ON / 0.2s OFF pulses. 1 Battery switching at 1 tick speeds will be half as efficient.
• A transformer will only produce/consume on itself if you isolate it with switchers or another in-line transformer otherwise it will tell you that a loop is detected.
• Large transformers produce and consume up to a max of 4000 J/s. Small transformers produce and consume up to a max of 1000J/s.
• Pulsing transformers do not inherently overload wires. Wires will only overload after they have accumulated enough overload time. Overloading needs a cooldown period of 95% of the uptime to prevent overload accumulation. This is any time greater than 6s or just 6.2s as each game tick is 0.2s
• Pulsing 2 transformers on the same line that are not synced to the same clock will cause an overload. This also applies if you have a consumer leakage through when battery switching without filters.
• Even if you see no visible damage when overloading because you perfectly hit the 6.2 second mark, Your wires will still break. Any Overload notification you get means your system is in fact overloaded. I found this out the semi-easy-medium-hard way.
• Power shutoffs can make wires enter the red zone that will remember the longest overload time in the chain when recombining. When used with a pulsing grid, this phenomenon usually causes overloads if not timed correctly.
• Transformers have build priority [I don't know how to trigger this, it's rare when using battery switchers]
• Wires will overload in this order; Wire Bridge -> Wire -> Conductive Wire Bridge -> Conductive Wire -> Heavi-Watt Joint Plate -> Heavi Watt Wire -> Heavi Watt Conductive Joint Plate -> Heavi Watt Conductive Wire.

 

Quick checklist for overloads

• Accidental Connections
• Out of sync pulsing
• Back feed leakage [shutoffs green on same tick] onto another another pulsing line
• Constant draw on a wire not rated for that load
• Check the draw on your transformers. You've either added too many consumers per transformer leading to a brownout or too many transformers on a wire not rated for that load.
• Are you giving your power shutoffs enough time to recover after hitting the red zone?
• Where is it overloading? Check your wire bridges they get affected first.

 

Thank You!

To everyone in the community for answering any questions I've ever had and providing inspiration to all of my past and future builds. There are some pretty smart people on these forums and I've learned a lot of logic from them and from playing this game.

 

And to Klei...Fun Game 👍

 

 

 

Blueprint Downloads

 

airflow floor.blueprint Battery Engine MK1.blueprint Battery Engine MK2 Even 50Kw w_4 Bats.blueprint Battery Engine MK2 Odd 50Kw.blueprint Battery Level 1Kw In _ 1Kw Out.blueprint Battery Level 333.33W In _ 1Kw Out.blueprint Battery Level 500W In _ 1Kw Out.blueprint Battery Switcher 3.0 50Kw w_ Shutoff Bug Fix.blueprint Battery Switcher 3.0 Cheap 50KW.blueprint Battery Switcher 3.0 Cheap.blueprint Battery Switcher 3.0 with Shutoff Bug Fix 50Kw.blueprint Battery Switcher 3.0.blueprint Capacitor Large Wire 20Kw.blueprint Capacitor Large Wire 50Kw.blueprint Capacitor Small Wire 20Kw.blueprint Capacitor Small Wire 50Kw.blueprint Inverter 20Kw.blueprint Inverter 50Kw.blueprint Inverter Extra Row Upgrade.blueprint Inverter Quick Fix.blueprint Inverter.blueprint NOT-NOT Oscillator.blueprint Oscillator Test.blueprint Poor Man's XOR Gate.blueprint The Great Consumer.blueprint The Not As Great Consumer.blueprint 20Kw Capacitor Large Wire.blueprint 20Kw Capacitor Small Wire.blueprint 20Kw Inverter.blueprint 50Kw Capacitor Large Wire.blueprint 50Kw Capacitor Small Wire.blueprint 50Kw Inverter.blueprint 100 Block Pulsing Relay.blueprint

Edited May 7 by BLACKBERREST3

[BLACKBERREST3]

I'm finally done! And no one commented during this whole time as I was trying to figure this out 😵‍💫! lol

Please lmk if this guide helps anyone or is inaccurate in any way.

[MinhPham]

I found that the battery switching is actually use more materials than the regular heavy watt backbone. The two batteries, the wires, the automations .... all of that added up into more than 1000kg of metal for each power switching unit.

And ... most players doesn't make it to the point where they need more than 50kW powerline (or be able to produce that much power).

 

But ... i learned one thing from your power switching conquest, to use the pulsed transformers in my own way.

• I run two power line across the world - a production line connect to all power producing buildings, and a consumer line.
• The pulsed tranformers are centralized with an automation timer of 1.9/2. It's input is connected to the production line and the output is connected to the consumer line.
• Power consumers are connected to the consumer line through a transformer just like how it works on heavy watt backbone, no automation. The transformers are charged during the active duration of the pulsed transformers and keep discharing during the inactive time, providing power to the consumers
• Each large transformer should be able to provide 1.9kW of power draw consistently, or at least it should be able to power an aquatuner. For stability a battery should be add to store extra power.
• Each regular transformer should be able to provide 475W of power, or at least a pump.

So ... thank you 

 

 

Edited May 7 by MinhPham

[BLACKBERREST3]

7 hours ago, MinhPham said:

I found that the battery switching is actually use more materials than the regular heavy watt backbone. The two batteries, the wires, the automations .... all of that added up into more than 1000kg of metal for each power switching unit.

And ... most players doesn't make it to the point where they need more than 50kW powerline (or be able to produce that much power).

 

But ... i learned one thing from your power switching conquest, to use the pulsed transformers in my own way.

• I run two power line across the world - a production line connect to all power producing buildings, and a consumer line.
• The pulsed tranformers are centralized with an automation timer of 1.9/2. It's input is connected to the production line and the output is connected to the consumer line.
• Power consumers are connected to the consumer line through a transformer just like how it works on heavy watt backbone, no automation. The transformers are charged during the active duration of the pulsed transformers and keep discharing during the inactive time, providing power to the consumers
• Each large transformer should be able to provide 1.9kW of power draw consistently, or at least it should be able to power an aquatuner. For stability a battery should be add to store extra power.
• Each regular transformer should be able to provide 475W of power, or at least a pump.

So ... thank you 

 

 

 

Np, everyone has their own play style and system. it’s nice to see what works and what doesn’t for people. I probably won’t use a pulsing grid myself, but i made sure to thoroughly test it just in case something useful might pop up later.

I think it helps that you are able to pulse at 95% efficiency. When used with switching, I could only get it to work at 33% because of the “red zone” stuff. Even then, if it wasn’t exactly .1s/.2s off, it just wouldn’t work and overload. being able to unify 1 area for a central power hub is pretty strong. I’ll test out switching again. My theory is that I won’t need a battery bank as i’ll have batteries everywhere where I need them so hopefully in the long run it will be cheaper. for super tiny things, i might try to switch with small batteries.

[KittenIsAGeek]

I've been using battery switching for a long time.  You're making it more complicated than it has to be.  The "quick and dirty" rules:

1. Batteries need power "pushed" into them.  This means that you need either a generator, a transformer, or some other source of power to charge a battery.  Two batteries connected on the same line will not charge each other.
2. Power going to "charge" a battery does not count as a consumer, so will not melt wires.
3. Three large power transformers can fully charge a smart battery from zero in one second, provided there is sufficient power on the "high" side, without burning regular wire on the 'low' side.

Usually I build my generators close together and use heavy-watt wire to connect them to their own control batteries.  This grid also has several large power transformers in parallel with a regular 'wire' acting as a high-power transmission line.

Spoiler

This set-up isn't the best, as I have some other transformers doing other things, but the two important ones are on the far upper left.

You can run the small wire easily through your base to where you need it.  At the other end you can do a couple of different things, but this is the one that I use the most:

Spoiler

Thin wire is the feed from the transformers.  Conductive wire is the line to whatever I'm powering.  Left battery is 95/10, right is 80/30.  Adjust for your usage.  When left battery is depleted, switches flip to right battery until the left is recharged.  When the right battery needs charging, it flips switches to do so.  Note: Screenshot is bugged.  The far left automation output from the battery goes through both switches and to the 'not' gate.  You won't have sync issues or burnt wires.

You can also do something similar with a single battery and a transformer if you want to force a limit on the power being used by consumers.

Spoiler

The ribbon reader is absolutely necessary to introduce a slight delay, just like the one created by the NOT gate.  This allows the switch and the transformer to change states simultaneously so that wires don't get melted.  The transformer will limit consumer side draw to 1000w, but you'll lose power temporarily during battery recharge.  You can put a small or large battery on the other side of the transformer to ensure continuous power, but you'll lose the 1000w limit effect of the transformer.  

Optionally, if you don't care about losing power AND you don't care about wattage limits, you can do something like this:

Spoiler

 

Anyway. If you're using a switching setup you want to make sure that your total power production capability is above your average use rate.  For the past few cycles, for example, my power usage has been around 2200kJ per cycle.

Spoiler

Meanwhile, you can see from the first spoiler that I have four hydrogen generators that can produce 4800 watts.  One watt is one joule per second.  There are 600 seconds per cycle, so my generators -- if running continuously -- can produce 2880 kJ per cycle.   This means that I should probably build another generator or two before I add another grid with consumers.

[MinhPham]

Power shutoff still bugged, it can be either enabled/inactive or disabled/active, regular switching builds couldn't address this problem which is why you see those "over-engineered"" stuffs
The fact is you still have to provide enough power to the grids, so instead of rely on battery level you can simply use a timer, and that will solve the shutoff bug.

[BLACKBERREST3]

On 5/10/2026 at 7:31 PM, MinhPham said:

Power shutoff still bugged, it can be either enabled/inactive or disabled/active, regular switching builds couldn't address this problem which is why you see those "over-engineered"" stuffs
The fact is you still have to provide enough power to the grids, so instead of rely on battery level you can simply use a timer, and that will solve the shutoff bug.

I know the most common fix is a timer, but you can detect it purely with automation or at the very least when no wattage is being consumed. I don't want it toggling states at random times. Never know when something is mission critical. There is more than one way to skin a cat as they say. Ah, so they can be disabled-active. I forgot if that was the case or not. 99% of the time for me they would be enabled through automation but inactive on the grid.

 

On 5/10/2026 at 2:54 PM, KittenIsAGeek said:

Usually I build my generators close together and use heavy-watt wire to connect them to their own control batteries.  This grid also has several large power transformers in parallel with a regular 'wire' acting as a high-power transmission line.

I made it complicated because any in-line transformer will limit throughput. If you make all of your generators see all your consumers' batteries all at once, You can charge them at an incredible rate, but if you go the transformer way you would have to match output energy to amount of transformers. I wanted to avoid using any transformer at all so to find a way to automate them, I sync them with a "remote battery level" which gets wired in parallel so I can avoid having generators having to be in-line of transformers and the gens can still see all of the consumer's batteries. I used switching a lot before too and I could never get a reliable automation anchor from the batteries I used for switching or I would have to build more transformers than were necessary and use heavi-watt wire for all the generators which is what you are doing and what I have done in the past too. I wouldn't recommend looping your high-power transmission line. I covered that in the looping section. It inadvertently reduces throughput when you do that. You said you wired them in parallel and not in series.

I included everything even the basics because I covered a lot more than I thought I would so I made the guide as feature-complete as I could. I see that you too knew about the tick delay. I didn't know if anyone knew about this already. Ribbon reader and filter do the same thing, add 1 tick delay. I prefer filters.

On 5/10/2026 at 2:54 PM, KittenIsAGeek said:

At the other end you can do a couple of different things, but this is the one that I use the most:

  Hide contents

 

On 5/10/2026 at 2:54 PM, KittenIsAGeek said:

Note: Screenshot is bugged.  The far left automation output from the battery goes through both switches and to the 'not' gate.  You won't have sync issues or burnt wires.

So I tried yours to see if you had the right tick delay on it, but I'm getting all four on the same tick. This leads to consumer leakage on the backbone.

I think I've set it up exactly how you have it in yours.

Edited May 12 by BLACKBERREST3

[BLACKBERREST3]

Also, difference between this and one with a not-not latch is that this will change states when the primary [left battery in this case] is red or green and the one with the latch will change states when it is green only. I wanted something with a little bit less switching if it didn't need to.

[MinhPham]

I don't know since when but discharge rate is not the same on every transfomer so it is not possible to have battery levels as a thing with current build ...

I had some fun with the half switching battery, it does work ... but in order to utilize full 2kW it will need an array of capacitors for the faster charge time, as the large transformer can't be let alone for more than 2 seconds, maybe less than 2 seconds because the moment they run out of power buildings will stop working for quite a while.

Edited May 12 by MinhPham

[BLACKBERREST3]

11 hours ago, MinhPham said:

I don't know since when but discharge rate is not the same on every transfomer so it is not possible to have battery levels as a thing with current build ...

I had some fun with the half switching battery, it does work ... but in order to utilize full 2kW it will need an array of capacitors for the faster charge time, as the large transformer can't be let alone for more than 2 seconds, maybe less than 2 seconds because the moment they run out of power buildings will stop working for quite a while.

I thought it was pretty funny that that had worked at all. When testing it looked to be pretty accurate at half efficiency especially when letting it run out of power. I think in order for it to have any sort of accuracy, you need to completely drain the transformer on a rhythm which is why I used the small transformers for better accuracy in the remote battery level build. I never fully tested it on the large transformers because I was getting brownouts regardless and I didn’t see the use of having a large transformer run on 1-bat switcher, but the mechanic is there for trying out new things. I can’t give a specific example, but there were plenty of times when I saw transformers that would drain before others either because of build priority or just because they turn on/off at different times. ngl, I don’t know how to explain that inconsistency. You would think that they would all charge and discharge at the same rate, but they just don’t sometimes.

Also, 1 tick speeds were very unreliable in my testing which is why I opted for a two-tick frequency on all the switchers. Some batteries would get caught draining on one side for too long as if the game accidentally skipped over them.

[MinhPham]

5 hours ago, BLACKBERREST3 said:

I thought it was pretty funny that that had worked at all. When testing it looked to be pretty accurate at half efficiency especially when letting it run out of power. I think in order for it to have any sort of accuracy, you need to completely drain the transformer on a rhythm which is why I used the small transformers for better accuracy in the remote battery level build. I never fully tested it on the large transformers because I was getting brownouts regardless and I didn’t see the use of having a large transformer run on 1-bat switcher, but the mechanic is there for trying out new things. I can’t give a specific example, but there were plenty of times when I saw transformers that would drain before others either because of build priority or just because they turn on/off at different times. ngl, I don’t know how to explain that inconsistency. You would think that they would all charge and discharge at the same rate, but they just don’t sometimes.

Also, 1 tick speeds were very unreliable in my testing which is why I opted for a two-tick frequency on all the switchers. Some batteries would get caught draining on one side for too long as if the game accidentally skipped over them.

You can have a look, i'm estimating around 60kW of consumers, the batteries are charged within less than a second, i was not able to detemine battery level accurately so i came up with another idea to decide which power generator block shall run.

The power draw of the transformers are inconsistent, and it's probably cause by the distance to the consumers/batteries

Powergrid.sav

Edited May 13 by MinhPham

[BLACKBERREST3]

I was playing on the spaced out dlc. I used dev tools to copy over your base to spaced out dlc because blueprints wasn't working on vanilla. I think they must have changed a few things because I'm getting brownouts on the exact same build. Settings don't copy over with dev tools. I set everything to the same. All I did was increase the switching frequency and I haven't gotten any brownouts. I disconnected the transformer looping block. I'm still looking at your setup.

The smaller battery level works here, but it is horribly inefficient. Good call to up the intake speed, .33Kw is not fast enough to stop those generators on time.

[BLACKBERREST3]

Now I can't remember if I actually did test this at all XD. I must have only done 1 tick speeds because it works perfectly fine on 2-tick speeds. We now also know that the base game is not that different from spaced out dlc in terms of power. Also, every time I load in I'm getting the power shutoff bug. I've never had it happen so consistently before.

Good Find

Don't want to miscredit here, kittenisageek is also using 1-bat switcher as well. his 2-bat switcher was on the wrong tick delay, but the 1-bat switcher is right because of the branched not-ribbon reader / not-filter

Edited May 13 by BLACKBERREST3

[BLACKBERREST3]

So 4Kw intake and 8Kw outtake was enough to stabilize the level. This is what you have currently for a 61.44Kw Load. I think the more power you are generating, the faster the intake needs to be so it has to scale with it to avoid wasting power. And the higher the load the faster the outtake to get a better response time from the generators.

[MinhPham]

4 minutes ago, BLACKBERREST3 said:

So 4Kw intake and 8Kw outtake was enough to stabilize the level. This is what you have currently for a 61.44Kw Load. I think the more power you are generating, the faster the intake needs to be so it has to scale with it to avoid wasting power. And the higher the load the faster the outtake to get a better response time from the generators.

You're right but they're also unreliable, run them for long enough you will see at least one of them barely discharge, maybe the one you want to run most of the time .... but they did a good job preventing the generators from overproduction

[BLACKBERREST3]

True, they just had to be accurate enough. The timers seemed to work well to synchronize them, but using timers limits their full output. maybe setting it to run 99% of the time will do something beneficial.

Also, I remember why this worked now XD. The transformer is the battery. I had tested it with a single battery and no transformer and I was getting brownouts with that. I think if you replace the transformer with another battery you don't have to worry about switching frequency as much.

oof just got a brownout in my own house just now, thanks duke

heres the pic i was trying to send

 

[MinhPham]

2 minutes ago, BLACKBERREST3 said:

True, they just had to be accurate enough. The timers seemed to work well to synchronize them, but using timers limits their full output. maybe setting it to run 99% of the time will do something beneficial.

Also, I remember why this worked now XD. The transformer is the battery. I had tested it with a single battery and no transformer and I was getting brownouts with that. I think if you replace the transformer with another battery you don't have to worry about switching frequency as much.

 

That's ... the full switching battery build, since the battery wont' charge each other

It was a fun experiment, but i think it used more materials than the full switch because of the heavy-watt wire segments, and doesn't cost less space, doesn't resist the shutoff bug

[BLACKBERREST3]

26 minutes ago, MinhPham said:

That's ... the full switching battery build, since the battery wont' charge each other

i don't think it needs to charge each other right? I like to have some charge in reserve, but if you were going to drain 100% of the battery, then yes you should use the transformer.

26 minutes ago, MinhPham said:

but i think it used more materials than the full switch because of the heavy-watt wire segments

I wasn't actually building it as cheap as I could, the battery switcher doesn't need heavi-watt wire here. I'll do a cost comparison real quick.

Transformer build uses 1315kg total metal. 225kg raw and 1090kg refined

Batt switcher with 2 smart batteries uses 1315kg total metal. 525kg raw and 790kg refined

The only reason why the transformer build is more expensive in terms of refined metal is because it has to use the heavi-conductive wire here as it draws 4kw for a 2kw load.

 

 

 

Edited May 13 by BLACKBERREST3

[MinhPham]

Wow they are identical in material cost ....

They can use regular heavy-watt wire too, but i treat all metals the same, refined or not :D. You might disagree into you made your way into oil biome, wherever it is in spaced-out

[BLACKBERREST3]

only times raw vs refined metal comes into play is early game. even then, my early game is usually less than 1kw before I start refining metal.

Transformer build wastes less energy over time, but 2 batteries makes it more robust as you don’t need that much switching speed. both are good.

Edited May 13 by BLACKBERREST3

[BLACKBERREST3]

i got some stuff to do rn, but I'll try to mess about with a wattage sensor on the level to see if it's any cheaper when I get back.

[BLACKBERREST3]

it's always that 0-4Kw difference. With or without a timer that is always the range at which I get the difference in battery levels between them all. I've tried a few more timer settings to see if that made any difference, but it's a catch 22. the higher the frequency of the timer, the more accurate, but also the less throughput you get out of a transformer. I couldn't find a sweet spot for it. It's accurate enough to do without the timer, but you have to use 2 batteries to prevent the first transformer from brown-outing. Couldn't find a way to use the wattage sensor to do anything useful here, I think the battery level tells us all we need to know. I wish the wattage sensor also went off how much power we generate. This seems to be a good upgrade when you start to generate more power.