Transformer Usage

[Lutzkhie]

transformer here in ONI acts like a battery with 1000w capacity, I think this should be changed into this

ckt 1, ckt 2 and ckt 3 will all produce 1000w of power for protection, that way we can make 3 separate circuit homerun

here is the current setup of transformer

very costly and not space efficient

and this is the new setup

simpler and efficient

in a real electrical power grid, a single transformer can supply lots of houses and buildings (unless if you want your building to have its own transformer in a 3phase setup). What im trying to propose here is a single transformer can supply 3 separate circuit homeruns providing 1000w each line.

All you have to do is connect directly to the transformer output like the first picture i showed you

but if you connect it on the line of one of the circuit it will become part of that circuit like this

[Saturnus]

A transformer can already sustain 4KW power draw. As it says in the tool tip, it can supply 1000J but it can do so 4 times per second (5 on ultraspeed debug mode). That means that if any single consumer is above 1KW, eg. aqautuner or metal refinery, then you need a battery, of any kind, on the consumer side as a buffer.

[Lutzkhie]

battery produces lots of heat unless you contain it, plus my design is based on real transformers

[Saturnus]

38 minutes ago, Lutzkhie said:

battery produces lots of heat unless you contain it, plus my design is based on real transformers

First off, I hardly see what relevance one specific type of real life transformer make? There are many many types of transformers in use in the real world.

Second, are you even reading my comment? I'm saying that what you are suggesting can already be done directly in the game. There is no need for it. Give me a reason for it to exist at all then I might actually evaluate whether I think it's a good idea or not. 

[SkySentinel]

@Lutzkhie If you want to talk about the real-life transformers, you should start from the missing of the fundamental electrodynamics principles in the game. The first and the most important of them is The Ohm's Law. It gives the reason why there're high voltage and low voltage lines (to reduce losses in long and heavy-loaded lines). From this point we can see the need of a step-down transformation and can talk about the real purpose of step-down transformers IRL. Nope, they don't protect from power grid overload. And nope, they don't storage any energy (their capacitance is nearly zero F). They even don't separate lines electrically: they are bi-directional; a step-down transformer can be used as a step-up transformer and vice versa. The only two things that really matter are a transformation coefficient and a rated load. They also provide the galvanic isolation, and have such parameters as rated voltage and frequency... that in the context of the game hardly ever need. Eh, whatever...

Under the current game's electrodynamics, there's no point to even think about real life electrodynamics. Someone really should post a suggestion about rework it for compliance with basic principles of the real electrodynamics. This will automatically solve a lot of issues that aren't a thing in the real life (incl. mentioned in this thread). Maybe I'll be that man, but I'm very unsure that the devs are interested in this.

[Kabrute]

5 hours ago, SkySentinel said:

@Lutzkhie If you want to talk about the real-life transformers, you should start from the missing of the fundamental electrodynamics principles in the game. The first and the most important of them is The Ohm's Law. It gives the reason why there're high voltage and low voltage lines (to reduce losses in long and heavy-loaded lines). From this point we can see the need of a step-down transformation and can talk about the real purpose of step-down transformers IRL. Nope, they don't protect from power grid overload. And nope, they don't storage any energy (their capacitance is nearly zero F). They even don't separate lines electrically: they are bi-directional; a step-down transformer can be used as a step-up transformer and vice versa. The only two things that really matter are a transformation coefficient and a rated load. They also provide the galvanic isolation, and have such parameters as rated voltage and frequency... that in the context of the game hardly ever need. Eh, whatever...

Under the current game's electrodynamics, there's no point to even think about real life electrodynamics. Someone really should post a suggestion about rework it for compliance with basic principles of the real electrodynamics. This will automatically solve a lot of issues that aren't a thing in the real life (incl. mentioned in this thread). Maybe I'll be that man, but I'm very unsure that the devs are interested in this.

You are wrong, ohm's law is not the cause of historesis losses in long lines its a way to evaluate the resistance comparable to other values.  For all intent and purpose the game is running floating ground dc power and when you overload a line you exceed cable housing resistance thus shorting to the asteroid damaging your wires.  The purpose of transformers in this game is as power isolatores  so that pulling excess amounts at A doesn't also raise power on line C, in your above setup A=C.  Klei electrical system responds like dc electronic circuits,

[The Plum Gate]

Yes, one can assume it's a 1V dc supply. And any length circuit has 1ohm resistance.

[SkySentinel]

10 hours ago, Kabrute said:

You are wrong, ohm's law is not the cause of historesis losses in long lines its a way to evaluate the resistance comparable to other values.  For all intent and purpose the game is running floating ground dc power and when you overload a line you exceed cable housing resistance thus shorting to the asteroid damaging your wires.  The purpose of transformers in this game is as power isolatores  so that pulling excess amounts at A doesn't also raise power on line C, in your above setup A=C.  Klei electrical system responds like dc electronic circuits,

Please don't tell me that I'm wrong, while you have no idea about practical implementations of Ohm's Law.

1. Here it is (one of them): Ploss=(Pload/U)^2xR. Yes, this is Ohm's Law too. It's actual for both AC and DC grids. From here you can easily trace the regularity between the losses, the workload, and the voltage. Also take into account that Ploss is the value of heat generation by a conductor.

2. Transformers cannot work with a linear DC voltage, they requires AC or pulse-modulated DC.

3. DC grids cannot work with a working ground, because ground resistance for DC equals infinity. Yes, you may argue that you saw DC grids grounding IRL (like for roof solar panels), but it was just a protective grounding to deal with lightning (lightning is not DC).

4. Overloading cannot be the direct cause of insulation breakdown. Insulation breakdown happens due to overvoltage or melting. Melting happens due to excessive heat generation because of high losses (see par. 1).

Furthermore, currently breakdown happens in a random place that is damn wrong. Power load with multiple parallel appliances doesn't spread across a conductor equally. Again Ohm's Law answers why this happens, and how it should be. Doesn’t matter AC or DC.

Furthermore, currently it doesn’t matter what material type for wiring you chose. IRL due to material resistivity the only suitable metals are aluminum, copper, gold, and silver. Otherwise all your wiring will meltdown before you count to three (see par. 1 again).

Klei electrical system completely overlooks fundamental Ohm's Law and looks like from parallel universe.

[SkySentinel]

@Kabrute And if you really want to talk about load distribution, I have a simple graphic explanation:

This rule is also not implemented in the game.

[Kabrute]

7 minutes ago, SkySentinel said:

@Kabrute And if you really want to talk about load distribution, I have a simple graphic explanation:

This rule is also not implemented in the game.

Electronically P3 = P1 for all math intent and purpose, for any given circuit board for calculating values across a rail all points are considered equal it is only across components that values are taken therefore Y=G=R since your components are all in parallel they all pull equal voltage only separate currents depending on device but even so on that top rail all values of V are the same at any point and all values of I are considered the same for every point along the rail.  For the sake of math in electronics, and as is expressed in the game, if you attached a Leg of wire call it p4 with no load off further, with no basic route to ground, it would still posses all values of V and I that all other points in the rail posses.  In truth in this system the entire line from end to end should melt out, thankfully it doesnt

[The Plum Gate]

16 minutes ago, SkySentinel said:

Klei electrical system completely overlooks fundamental Ohm's Law and looks like from parallel universe.

Not a practical physics sim, right.

..joules is the part that doesn't make sense in the context I gave you. Having the batteries and step-down transformer's capacities written in watt-seconds would nullify the need for such arguments. Batteries and transformers are the one and only place that joules are used in the energy system. They are only alluded to elsewhere in heat energy transfer - which we really don't have any devices that measure this directly.

Practically speaking, they refer to the transformer as ...adjusting the supply according to demand to prevent overloading of circuits - this sounds more like a capacitor with and a zener diode bridge to me. More like an inductor since there's no power run off.

So one could throw Henries at it. or Farads, or Coulomb volts...

Or simply assume that since a 400 Watt supply will add 400 joules per second to the battery - and simply dismiss this as some sort of realistic device or circuit.

That being said, the problem your idea presents is one in which the state of the circuit in the one tile which the terminal exists would have to be checked 4 times - once for each direction it can go in, which is impractical, since adjacent circuits not passing through or connecting to that transformer circuit - on those 4 tiles would affected - this seems more like a matter of simply wanting more output terminals on the transformer - having three separate, or 4 separate/isolated circuits coming from one cell is begging for issues.

[SkySentinel]

10 minutes ago, Kabrute said:

Electronically P3 = P1 for all math intent and purpose, for any given circuit board for calculating values across a rail all points are considered equal it is only across components that values are taken therefore Y=G=R since your components are all in parallel they all pull equal voltage only separate currents depending on device but even so on that top rail all values of V are the same at any point and all values of I are considered the same for every point along the rail.  For the sake of math in electronics, and as is expressed in the game, if you attached a Leg of wire call it p4 with no load off further, with no basic route to ground, it would still posses all values of V and I that all other points in the rail posses.  In truth in this system the entire line from end to end should melt out, thankfully it doesnt

Oh. My. Gosh. Are you serious? You really should wear a flower garland for a while… 

I=U/R

U=constant

R_load1=R_load2=R_load3 and parallel

I₃=U/R_load

I₂₊₃=U/(R_load/2)=2U/R_load

I₁₊₂₊₃=U/(R_load/3)=3U/R_load

P=IU

Need to continue?

[Kasuha]

20 minutes ago, SkySentinel said:

Oh. My. Gosh. Are you serious? You really should wear a flower garland for a while… 

I=U/R

U=constant

R_load1=R_load2=R_load3 and parallel

I₃=U/R_load

I₂₊₃=U/(R_load/2)=2U/R_load

I₁₊₂₊₃=U/(R_load/3)=3U/R_load

P=IU

Need to continue?

There's no R and no U in ONI. Wires have no resistance and there's no voltage, it's just power going through the wires in a magical way. A building taking 120 W is taking it regardless how long the wire towards the producer or battery is.

Also trying the realistic calculation gets rather complex when loops are introduced into the circuit. There's no way to rerun such calculation every time a building on a grid switches on or off or a new piece of wire is built.

Current implementation is unrealistic but simple.

 

[SkySentinel]

@The Plum Gate Yes, you’re right, and I can agree that Klei system was made like it was for the sake of simplification (and optimization obviously). But I can’t agree with the missing of the fundamental electrodynamics law. It’s not because I’m a big fan of physics (I am, but it’s not the reason), but because such simplification makes new issues that don’t exist in the real life. These transformers are a perfect example of such issues. You know and/or can see in my illustration, why we don’t need transformers in that role IRL. Furthermore the missing of fundamental principles makes the game less interesting (for example, you don’t have to care about wires material). If the Klei would make the electric system just a bit more complicated by implementing Ohm’s Law, it won’t overload the CPU calculations. You can find implementation of it in Minecraft mods, 7 Days to Die game and even in browser flash applications. The only heavy-loading thing is the calculation of transient processes and thankfully we don’t need them.

10 minutes ago, Kasuha said:

There's no R and no U in ONI. Wires have no resistance and there's no voltage, it's just power going through the wires in a magical way.

This is exactly what I’m talking about. We don’t have Ohm’s Law in the game. And I don’t like magic in sci-fi games.

[Saturnus]

@SkySentinel For all intent and purposes ONI power lines are superconducting serial circuits. Superconductors have no resistance but they do have inductance. Contrary to popular belief superconductors can't transmit infinite amounts of current since the inductance would increase thereby effectively increasing resistance hence we see different types of wires have different circuit load capacities.

When you look at it the right way, ie. as superconducting serial circuits, all the hand waving magic actually starts to make sense.

So Ohm's Law very much still exists in the game but because we are dealing with superconductors resistance and voltage have no relevance.  

[SkySentinel]

@Saturnus Ok, this seems legit. But power consumers do have resistance anyway, so anyway we should have different power load in subcircuits (without separation with help of transformer).

[Saturnus]

Just now, SkySentinel said:

@Saturnus Ok, this seems legit. But power consumers do have resistance anyway, so anyway we should have different power load in subcircuits.

I say they don't have resistance and instead have inductance. Superconductors do work through inductance. It's the only way they can interact with anything and still be a superconductor. And in a serial circuit the entire network is affected by all "loads" on the same network. The result in game is that you can often see a single piece of standard wire overload when they rest of the circuit is conductive wire even if that piece of wire is not connected to anything. That's a clear indication that we're dealing with serial circuits.

[SkySentinel]

@Saturnus It's not serial, and you missed one variable.

R_circuit=R_wire+R_load

Even if R_wire equals zero, R_load still exists.

[Saturnus]

1 minute ago, SkySentinel said:

@Saturnus It's not serial, and you missed one variable.

R_circuit=R_wire+R_load

Even if R_wire equals zero, R_load still exists.

0=0+0

No voltage, no resistance. Superconductors have exactly zero voltage. Only current.

[SkySentinel]

7 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

0=0+0

No voltage, no resistance.

if R_load=0, then P_work=0 => nothing works

Even if we talk about inductance and impedance instead of linear resistance, in our case R_load=Z_load.

[Saturnus]

8 minutes ago, SkySentinel said:

if R_load=0, then P_work=0 => nothing is working

Even if we talk about inductance and impedance instead of linear resistance, in our case R_load=Z_load.

What are you talking about? Are you forgetting Ampere's Circuital Law? Machines on a superconducting serial circuit do work through adding current differentials together until they reach the critical point where the superconductor breaks down.

Impedance and resistance are always zero. If a superconductor reaches critical current the resistance changes from zero to infinite. Usually this change is near instant.

[Master Miner]

2 hours ago, Kabrute said:

Electronically P3 = P1 for all math intent and purpose, for any given circuit board for calculating values across a rail all points are considered equal

You're confusing potential with power.

Too high potential (Voltage) would break the insulation, but the voltage (in respect to the "ground") does not increase if you draw more power.

Too much power drawn (too high current) heats the conductor and could smelt the insulation and/or smelt the conductor itself, but this won't occur on a random part of the conductor - it would occur only on the part that has high current flowing through it.

SkySentinel is right in the depiction above. Even if there is no explicit resistance, it is implied by having "power damage"

(It would be "voltage damage" otherwise...)

[Saturnus]

1 minute ago, Master Miner said:

Even if there is no explicit resistance, it is implied by having "power damage"

Not if the wires are superconductors. They have a critical current which in many way can be seen as equal to resistance but it is in fact not the same.

[SkySentinel]

@Saturnus Please share a formula how your superconducting machine works.

I mean exact equation, using which I can find exact J/s value of your superconductive machine.

[Master Miner]

9 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

Not if the wires are superconductors. They have a critical current which in many way can be seen as equal to resistance but it is in fact not the same.

This idea about superconductors is a wild speculation, I think it is safe to assume that Klei devs didn't think about superconductors when designing the power lines aspects

Nevertheless, it is an interesting idea. Still, the "power damage" would happen only in a place where a critical current occurs, not at the end of a line with a consumer which draws few Watts.

Edit: ... unless all consumers are connected serially, so a 5W lamp can have like 1kW consumers drawing power through it.