Yet another idea how to make energy grids work

[Kasuha]

This elaborates on the idea about having different "voltages" from this thread: http://forums.kleientertainment.com/topic/76431-voltagecurrent-for-better-power-management/ - I thought it's good enough to give it its own thread.

TL;DR: The idea is to use the standard wire and heavy wire to make separate grids where energy can only go from the "heavy" to the "standard", not the other way, and consumers and batteries can only connect to the standard grid.

Standard wire makes one kind of grid with current restrictions, i.e. maximum of 1 kW power consumption on single "grid". You can connect anything to it, all producers, consumers, and batteries.

Heavy wire is another kind of grid. It's a "producer-only" grid so you can only connect energy producers to it, not even batteries. It has no restrictions on transferred power.

And you can connect a "transformer" device that will transfer power from this heavy grid to the standard one. They only work one way, so a producer on heavy grid can feed a consumer/battery on standard grid, but a producer on standard grid cannot feed anything behind the transformer, it's only restricted to its standard grid.

So you can have a number of local grids with producers, batteries and consumers, or you can have one large supply grid that feeds energy to a number of local grids with just batteries to keep them up when producers are off. Or something in between, whatever you need.

I think there's no point allowing batteries on the heavy grid although it makes technical sense - it would mean players would make unrestricted heavy grid with producers and batteries, and only branch transformer-consumer pairs off it. With batteries not allowed on heavy grid, they will take more care about building local grids with multple consumers and battery capacity to sustain it.

[scientas]

I don't like the idea of restricting what can be on which grid. That limits what I'm allowed to build and it should be my decision what I want on my grids. Otherwise this would just be a build by number with everyone building the same base. Batteries should definitely be on the producer grid because they are you back up generators. Back up generators aren't consumers.

I do like the idea of a transformer to regulate sub-grids though. Have each transformer type be capable of regulating the max the wires can handles (one for light wire one for heavy) then have it's overlay show how much consumption is connected to it. Then it you overload the transformer explodes rather than a couple of pieces of wire melting.

[Kasuha]

1 hour ago, scientas said:

I don't like the idea of restricting what can be on which grid.

You are already restricted by what can be on pipe grid and on gas pipe grid, This is just introducing another type of grid with certain purpose and certain transported medium (which can be called "high voltage power").

1 hour ago, scientas said:

Batteries should definitely be on the producer grid because they are you back up generators. Back up generators aren't consumers.

Batteries are not back up generators. They're energy storage. And they turn to consumers while they charge. You can refer to my last paragraph for reasoning though.

In general, I liked the original "no restrictinons" grid best. This is just attempt to keep some restrictions introduced in latest release while still allowing players to build large grids with centralized power generation, meaning less restrictions than there are at present. Because nowadays, "everybody just researches heavy wire and uses it everywhere" and they're still restricted to 2 kW per grid. Which I believe is not really optimal either.

[scientas]

11 minutes ago, Kasuha said:

You are already restricted by what can be on pipe grid and on gas pipe grid, This is just introducing another type of grid with certain purpose and certain transported medium (which can be called "high voltage power").

Batteries are not back up generators. They're energy storage. And they turn to consumers while they charge. You can refer to my last paragraph for reasoning though.

You mean between liquid and gas pipes? Electricity is electricity. I don't want to have to manage between different electricity types.

I'd ideally want to have my generators feeding only batteries and the transformer so that the batteries charge but power keeps generating and running machinery. The only time charge would leave my batteries is if the generators aren't running. As long as someone is on the wheel I shouldn't lose battery charge.

If you think about an alarm clock, you keep a battery as back up in case the power goes out. you don't use your power to charge the battery and have the clock consume power from both the battery and the power grid.

[Kasuha]

11 minutes ago, scientas said:

If you think about an alarm clock, you keep a battery as back up in case the power goes out. you don't use your power to charge the battery and have the clock consume power from both the battery and the power grid.

If you buy the battery in a store, yes. But that's not the case used in this game. If you have an accumulator in your alarm clock, it charges when it's on power, and supplies the power then the mains is off. That's how your phone and mobile devices work, too.

The separation of local grids and the producer grid would have some advantages, too. First, you could assign priorities to transformers and the power grid would switch them off in that order when the generation is not sufficient (and that would not mean they're out of power, they would continue running on their batteries). And second, too heavy draw in one local grid would not drain batteries in other local grids.

[scientas]

3 minutes ago, Kasuha said:

If you buy the battery in a store, yes. But that's not the case used in this game. If you have an accumulator in your alarm clock, it charges when it's on power, and supplies the power then the mains is off. That's how your phone and mobile devices work, too.

You know, that wouldn't be a bad idea for advanced power research.

Have a next level battery that attaches directly to a machine that stores power as the generator is up and running but only supplies to a that specific machine. So instead of the entire network draining all connected batteries, there would be a one-to-one producer/consumer relationship. Then you refrigerators won't run out of power because something else hogged all the battery power overnight.

12 minutes ago, Kasuha said:

The separation of local grids and the producer grid would have some advantages, too. First, you could assign priorities to transformers and the power grid would switch them off in that order when the generation is not sufficient (and that would not mean they're out of power, they would continue running on their batteries). And second, too heavy draw in one local grid would not drain batteries in other local grids.

I think we're thinking the same thing, I'm just fighting the need to have different wiring for both. Essentially one loop is production that feed to a distribution method then you can split into separate consumption grids and manage as desired.

Maybe the thing to do would have power cables run from generators to transformers, heavy wiring run from transformers to outlets, and normal wiring run from machines into outlets.

1. Production

2. Distribution

3. Consumption

I think I get it now. If I think of it in three grids rather than two it makes sense.