New Player, Not Sure Why my Grid is Overloading

[horrid yeetus]

Hey, new player here. This is only my second colony, though I have some experience from watching vids of the game. Just got my electrolyzer/hydrogen generator setup going, but It's causing my grid to overload and I"m not sure why. Was hoping someone could tell me why and how I can fix it. Thanks!

[Risu]

I'm seeing a power demand of 3180W. There's quite a bit over the 1000W limit. Gonna need 4 separate circuits for that many machines.
Not that they all will be running because of the insane oxygen production over-pressurizing the base.
 

[horrid yeetus]

Where would you recommend separating the grids? Also, I disabled the Algae oxygen machines. Just not in this screenshot. Any other tips for a nub?

[Allio]

I often have problems managing my overload. To avoid making "technical columns" I decided to create independent zones. I usually have 6 or 7 zones (800 at 1200 W max) with batteries to hold on for the duration.

[KevinWalter]

Someone else was asking about this very thing over on the Steam forums the other day, so excuse me for just copy/pasting what I said over there...

If you open the power overlay and click on your power grid, you can see all of the power-drawing structures that are connected to the grid. If your grid is getting strained and damaging wires, then you're drawing too much power from that grid, and you need to break that grid up to reduce the load. 

Generation doesn't matter, and batteries are considers generators. What matters is the draw. So if you have a whole bunch of refrigerators, pumps, filters, etc connected to one power grid with small wires, then you're going to strain and eventually damage those wires. 

What you need to do is put your generators and batteries in a location where you can easily connect them to each other with heavy-watt wire, and then connect them to transformers, again with heavy-watt wire. Once you connect your generators to the transformers, the transformers will output a maximum of 1kw, preventing damage to individual grids, as the grid won't be able to supply enough power to enough structures to become overloaded in the first place. 

So, if this symbol (===) represents heavy-wat wire, and this symbol (---) represents normal wire, you want to wire your base as follows:

Generators === Batteries === Transformers --- Everything you want to power. 

Spoiler

The above image is my current colony. You can see how I have my generator room laid out in the bottom right corner. The coal generators are connected to the batteries with heavy-watt wires, which are then run through the insulated wall with heavy-watt tiles, and then connected to two transformers, which then supply two different grids of structures. One maintains my ventilation and exosuit systems, and the other maintains food preservation and liguid pumps, currently. 

You want to be sure to watch power output on each individual grid. You don't want to go above 1000 watts of draw on any grid using normal wires. 

You should also remember that certain items only draw power while in-use, such as powered airlocks, so if you have all of your powered airlocks on their own individual grid that has a potential power draw of like 2000 watts, it's not really an issue, as dupes won't be using all of those doors at the same time, and it will never actually reach 2000 watts of simultaneous draw (probably).

[horrid yeetus]

Thanks for this, very helpful.

[vonVile]

At 40 Cycles your base shouldn't be that big, so don't need that much machinery to produce sufficient Oxygen. The base must be at 5K per tile. Either decide to live off Algae Oxydizers or the Electrolizers. Get rid of 4 Algae Oxydizers converters and Electrolizers, and 3 Air Pumps. You should have enough power to run everything without overload. If you have any long tunnels put up Airlocks to confine the Oxygen.

[brummbar7]

@hilariouslijahYour electrolyzers - each electrolyzer produces 1000g/s of gas.  In a closed room you need *two pumps per electroylzer* to fully evacuate that.  With four pumps you only need two electrolyzers in there.  That'll reduce your potential draw quite a bit.

However, gas pipes can only hold 1000g of gas at a time.  I can't see your gas overlay but I'm guessing you only have 1 duct serving all four of those pumps, which only 50% of the capacity needed to fully utilize them; inefficient.  It only takes 1 electrolyzer to produce enough oxygen for nearly 9 average dupes.  So in summary, most of that equipment in that electrolyzer room is redundant.  I'd suggest just going off algae in the general base for this few dupes.  As long as you expand at a decent rate, you will find enough algae to keep going, especially in the hot biomes - and that hot biome algae is germ free.  I only use electrolyzer oxygen for filling atmo suits (but I also don't play a base for more than 300 or so cycles usually, before the next update is out)