dearmad Posted August 4, 2018 Share Posted August 4, 2018 Once you have your banks of power generators hooked up through your one smart battery "gate" and then into your transformers... why would you ever need more than one battery running your main collection of circuits? It acts less as a real battery at this point and more as a simple point of automation to engage your power generators. Now, maybe if you want to divide your power generators up so that certain banks of them run at certain times you would hook them up through a different batter, but I don't see why I would ever want more than one smart batter (or any others0 on any collection of circuits at all. Waste of power and extra heat, and just waste of space. Oh the only reason I am currently doing it is when the power generators are run off different elements, and I want to separate them for control of resource consumption... So... am I missing something obvious? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lilalaunekuh Posted August 4, 2018 Share Posted August 4, 2018 My current base is running 4 hydrogen generators with ~75% uptime and I can sustain all my energy needs. When the downtime starts and I want to run " jukebot + arcade cabinet + esspresso machine" (2640W) and some minor base automation, I will need some kind of energy storage to satisfy my peak power consumption. => But I if I really want to cut down the number of batteries, I try to use stored hydrogen and some extra generators as "run-off-free" batteries. PS: If you use parallel generators you will have to lower the upper limit to turn the generators off to prevent some energy loss. (Could be more impactfull than the battery run-off) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dearmad Posted August 4, 2018 Author Share Posted August 4, 2018 So your energy production total for all generators is less than the potential total draw? Oh... That makes sense. In that case a few batteries might save on space and hookups and perhaps heat. OK, makes sense. This game... my brain... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
martosss Posted August 4, 2018 Share Posted August 4, 2018 Can i just post a link to a post where I show off my base, maybe you can appreciate all the cases that need batteries. Here are a few scenarios where you need smart batteries: Control a set of generators that are in 1 location Control another set of generators that are far away from (1) Control consumers that are yet far away from (1) and (2) Control a different set of generators that doesn't behave the same(e.g. coal generators might be controlled separately from Hydrogen or natural gas or others). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sasza22 Posted August 4, 2018 Share Posted August 4, 2018 I like to have one smart battery per generator so i can set each of them to activate at a certain power level, especially if they use different fuel. It`s also pretty simple and allows flexibility when geysers go dormant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arroyo Posted August 4, 2018 Share Posted August 4, 2018 Yeah as others have said, my use is to kick in "backup" generators if the battery level gets too low (ie your main generators aren't supplying sufficient power). The backups might be using a fuel you want to minimise, eg you're using hydrogen or natural gas mainly, but want coal or petroleum to cover peaks in demand. Also has the very handy side-effect of kicking the backups in automatically if you're making any changes to your main power generators Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShadowOfALegend Posted August 4, 2018 Share Posted August 4, 2018 diverting power through automation is just as potent to have in one's knowledge as being able to tie in a smart battery to a generator Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scorpio King Posted August 4, 2018 Share Posted August 4, 2018 I build smart batteries only, the run off is only 400j instead of 2000j of normal battery, heat generation is less. And i hook it that way so less important power source is used when charge is at certain %. Turn in coal if below 90%, hydrogen if below 75%, natural gas if below 50% and finally petroleum if lower than 25%. I always have solar panels on whole day. Right now only 2, but shine bugs keep both of them at 380w 100% of the time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
martosss Posted August 4, 2018 Share Posted August 4, 2018 35 minutes ago, Scorpio King said: I build smart batteries only, the run off is only 400j instead of 2000j of normal battery, heat generation is less. And i hook it that way so less important power source is used when charge is at certain %. Turn in coal if below 90%, hydrogen if below 75%, natural gas if below 50% and finally petroleum if lower than 25%. I always have solar panels on whole day. Right now only 2, but shine bugs keep both of them at 380w 100% of the time. Good job! A clear example how multiple smart batteries can be used to control different types of generators. Also, careful with power transformers - don't switch them off directly using logic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scorpio King Posted August 4, 2018 Share Posted August 4, 2018 1 hour ago, martosss said: Also, careful with power transformers - don't switch them off directly using logic. Some kind of bug? What happens? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
martosss Posted August 4, 2018 Share Posted August 4, 2018 15 minutes ago, Scorpio King said: Some kind of bug? What happens? When you connect a smart battery to the power transformer with a logic cable and turn off the power transformer automatically when the battery is full/empty, it will delete the power transformer's charge. So basically don't use the power transformer's automation port! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Denisetwin Posted August 4, 2018 Share Posted August 4, 2018 36 minutes ago, martosss said: When you connect a smart battery to the power transformer with a logic cable and turn off the power transformer automatically when the battery is full/empty, it will delete the power transformer's charge. So basically don't use the power transformer's automation port! wait what? how did I miss this? I've been using a smart battery to turn off my transformers to save on heat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lifegrow Posted August 4, 2018 Share Posted August 4, 2018 42 minutes ago, martosss said: When you connect a smart battery to the power transformer with a logic cable and turn off the power transformer automatically when the battery is full/empty, it will delete the power transformer's charge. So basically don't use the power transformer's automation port! But the charge it holds is next to nothing, and it prevents energy loss as heat.... This is bad advice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scorpio King Posted August 4, 2018 Share Posted August 4, 2018 1 minute ago, Lifegrow said: But the charge it holds is next to nothing, and it prevents energy loss as heat.... This is bad advice. 4kj is not nothing, 10% of normal battery 20% of smart one. If you flip it on and off few times a day you drain all your power. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lifegrow Posted August 4, 2018 Share Posted August 4, 2018 Just now, Scorpio King said: 4kj is not nothing, 10% of normal battery 20% of smart one. If you flip it on and off few times a day you drain all your power. If you're flipping it on/off more than a couple of times a cycle - your grid is already flawed. More batteries on the consumer side means less intermittent charging - means less waste. That is however countered by passive battery drain, so meh - it's kind of lesser of two evils. Main point of note - is anyone struggling with power generation nowadays ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
martosss Posted August 4, 2018 Share Posted August 4, 2018 The point is that you can achieve the same effect without wasting energy if you put a power shutoff above the transformer and disable that with the smart battery - then the power transformer will drain it's charge and then stop working, Result - 4kJ more power, less heat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zarquan Posted August 5, 2018 Share Posted August 5, 2018 I put multiple batteries on a circuit in the early game when I am running coal generators so that the coal generators can go out for a longer time. Mixing battery types can mildly mess up the automation or dupe interactions, so I generally build 2 smart batteries as a safety. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sevio Posted August 6, 2018 Share Posted August 6, 2018 On 8/4/2018 at 7:52 PM, Scorpio King said: 4kj is not nothing, 10% of normal battery 20% of smart one. If you flip it on and off few times a day you drain all your power. The transformer only starts holding a charge if it has filled the low side battery to 100%. If you set the upper limit of the low side battery to 95%, the transformer never gets the chance to build up an internal charge so it never loses any when it's disabled by the battery. You can have your cake and eat it too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nitroturtle Posted August 6, 2018 Share Posted August 6, 2018 When I tried using power shut-offs to disabled transformers, my low usage transformers kept bugging out and getting stuck with 1j displayed even with the shut-off disabled. They would also still show the active animation and continue producing heat. Has anyone else seen this happen and know what causes it? Granted, this was in the CU, so maybe it's been fixed with the transformer revamp. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
martosss Posted August 7, 2018 Share Posted August 7, 2018 56 minutes ago, Nitroturtle said: When I tried using power shut-offs to disabled transformers, my low usage transformers kept bugging out and getting stuck with 1j displayed even with the shut-off disabled. They would also still show the active animation and continue producing heat. Has anyone else seen this happen and know what causes it? Granted, this was in the CU, so maybe it's been fixed with the transformer revamp. You need to disable on the high end, move the power shutoff on the high circuit between the power transformer and the generators. That way it uses the charge and then disables. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nitroturtle Posted August 7, 2018 Share Posted August 7, 2018 2 minutes ago, martosss said: You need to disable on the high end, move the power shutoff on the high circuit between the power transformer and the generators. That way it uses the charge and then disables. Yeah that's how I had it setup. I just saw it bug out several times, on different circuits even. Moving the battery slider to force it to toggle back to charging again would fix the issue. But if it went unnoticed, it would just sit there generating heat until the battery called for a charge again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
martosss Posted August 7, 2018 Share Posted August 7, 2018 39 minutes ago, Nitroturtle said: Yeah that's how I had it setup. I just saw it bug out several times, on different circuits even. Moving the battery slider to force it to toggle back to charging again would fix the issue. But if it went unnoticed, it would just sit there generating heat until the battery called for a charge again. I'm curious to see a pic of this, sounds like a bug. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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