Your best power grids

[Jigsawn]

I'm reaching the end of my first long term base, now I've built almost everything the game has to offer (made it to 700 cycles).

But one thing I think I didn't figure out very well was power grids, so I'm interested in hearing about your setups and power efficiency. It's not my strong suit to figure out and I don't have time to do long playthroughs to try other methods.

In the mid game I had a setup like this:

Individual circuits each with their own generators, and a transformer from the generators to the circuit if the potential power drain was too high. 6 smart batteries per circuit hooked up to the generators. Didn't get much power loss per cycle from battery loss (maybe 5% lost power or so).

Once I had more circuits and harnessed a natural gas geyser, I had to change the setup. I put my Nat gas gens as a central "core" using heavy watt wire, and had transformers from the core leading off to each circuit. But I kept the original generators and smart batteries on each circuit in order to make up for any power shortfall from the core (which happened quite often).

The nat gas gens were running full time when the geyser was active and I was usually using more power than the Nat gas could provide, so I don't think it was too wasteful. I ran into power problems though once the geyser went inactive and had to build more coal gens and hamster wires per circuit. I wondered though if I should have used smart batteries with the NG gens somehow to conserve the Nat gas? I tried it but couldn't figure out how to make the grid activate the NG gens before the individual circuit generators.

Finally once I had big machines needing 1000W+ and a steam/petrol gen, I hooked up the big power gens, the Nat gas gens and some extra coal and hydrogen gens to a vast heavy watt network. This was my new core providing Kw of power. But my base power demands fluctuate heavily. I still kept the transformers, individual circuit gens and batteries as often the core couldn't keep up with demand, especially if steam or petrol wasn't flowing. Important circuits would go offline and so I had to keep the individual circuit generators running to avoid catastrophe.

At other times my base was using very little power, but the power core was still outputting at full capacity, wasting a lot of fuel. I needed some better way to regulate the power core so it wasnt wasting power during these times, yet still keep critical circuits up and running during power shortages.

That's just how it evolved and I'm not sure how I could have made it more efficient. Adding batteries to the core would have just meant more wasted power. With so many circuits (8 or more) each with their own bank of smart batteries, I have no idea how you would hook up those batteries to the core generators spread over the map. And how you would toggle them, you wouldn't want every generator in the core to fire up just for a little bit of power request from one of the circuits. Even then, I'd have needed some prioritization system to make sure the most important circuits got power first, such as cooking and oxy production, before non critical like plastic production. I did lower the smart batteries per circuit to 3 after reading on here many people just use one battery per circuit. My circuits all had a big potential power draw so I didn't want the batteries too low in number. And I still didn't have too much smart battery power wastage with the new system. Another problem with the transition was that presumably I was wasting power recharging smart batteries using both the power core and circuit generators, when maybe they didn't need to be. Maybe batteries should have been on the core instead.

Any thoughts on how I could have done it better? What setups do you like to use in mid game and transitioning to bigger machines and more circuits? Is the power core idea a good one (I mean this is what we use in our own society but can it work in ONI?).

If this is too hard to visualise I could try and knock up some simple diagrams in Paint for how I had things laid out.

[BlueLance]

Would you be able to provide some pictures showing the layout of your energy grid? It might help identify anything that others might spot. 

[Jigsawn]

Yeah I will try to do this tomorrow with diagrams, I understand its confusing to picture. I can't just screenshot the setup as it covers half the map and is a horrific warren of wires

[BlueLance]

1 minute ago, Jigsawn said:

Yeah I will try to do this tomorrow with diagrams, I understand its confusing to picture. I can't just screenshot the setup as it covers half the map and is a horrific warren of wires

Haha I think you only need to show your bank, and the systems, not everything in between  If i remember I will show you my basic power set up I have at cycle 100. From there it usually doesn't change

[beowulf2010]

What I do that works fairly efficiently is to have a few smaller banks of generators all hooked up to a main heavy watt power line. A single smart battery is with each bank to automate them to not waste fuel.

The "turn on" setting on the smart battery is different for each bank depending on the availability of the fuel. Coal is usually around 50%, hydrogen 80% once I start using electrolyzer, natural gas depends on how good the geyser(s) are and if I'm using a fertilizer farm. 

Then, off of that trunk line, is a power shut off, transformer, and another smart battery automating the power shut off so that the transformer only charges the battery when it's mostly drained. 

I can post a couple pictures tonight when I get back home from work if someone else doesn't beat me to it. 

[TheExceed]

I have one large powerplant next to my main base. Extend that off to my oxygen system and then use coal generators for everything else. Paired with smart batteries.. theyre pretty good long term. I am sitting at 600T of coal rn bc of my hatches.

[BlueLance]

My design is pretty similar to @beowulf2010, except I dont use shut offs or batteries except for when I use an aquatuner or I have an external self powering system (I.e A natural gas generator, smart battery and hamster wheel) which is next to my natural gas geyser, it pumps to my base and steals some if it needs some. I use a similar system for Hydrogen.

[Kasuha]

I usually start with building small local grids, each with its own hamster wheel and battery. One for deoxydizers, one for cooking, one for refinery+plastic, one for water treatment etc. When I build electrolyzers, I make them power themselves with their hydrogen, again on a local grid.

Later I build a large power facility with all kinds of generators and logic and massive amount of transformers and then I start pulling wires from it and hooking those small local grids, removing their wheels and batteries.

[beowulf2010]

My game process is identical to @Kasuha. Everything in the beginning is powered by hamster wheels with 2 large batteries for buffers.

Then, when I finally seal off an entrance to my base, I make my first bank of coal generators and begin to hook up the hamster wheel sub grids to transformers. My current base still has a hamster wheel powering the kitchen. Haven't spent the time getting my trunk line over there. 

@BlueLance, you probably already know this, but for newer players (like myself a couple months ago),  I'm going to explain my reasoning for it. Heck, for all I know, I pillaged the idea from you. I'm having trouble keeping track of who I steal which ideas/techniques from.

The reason I spend the resources on a shutoff and smart battery behind each transformer is to give another layer of buffer to spread out demand and avoid those random peak draw brown outs I had in earlier bases, especially the first couple times I played around with aquatuners... My generators only run when there's a sub-battery to charge and stay off the rest of the time as most of my circuits slowly draw off the sub-batteries.

Plus, the speed that a battery recharges through a transformer is enough of an advantage for me to "waste" around 225kg of refined metal, plus however much normal metal the shutoff needs (100kg?). 

Is this as effective on late game power hungry circuits? No, but if I cam buffer the nicer circuits, it helps me handle the monsters more consistently. 

And considering I used to just sit a bank of 25 large batteries on top of my base, this is a huge improvement. 

[BlueLance]

This is the basis of my set up (I misplaced my Hydrogen gens so I I had to deconstruct and reconstruct them)

These are my three main supplies, Currently Hydrogen is my main, and will probably remain that way for a few hundred cycles, Natural gas is my backup, and then Coal. I use hamster wheels until I have the research to make coal gens and smart batteries. From here it all depends on where my geysers are for Steam, and Petroleum gets added on after to the left of the Nat Gas Gens

[KittenIsAGeek]

6 hours ago, Jigsawn said:

I'm reaching the end of my first long term base, now I've built almost everything the game has to offer (made it to 700 cycles).

But one thing I think I didn't figure out very well was power grids, so I'm interested in hearing about your setups and power efficiency. It's not my strong suit to figure out and I don't have time to do long playthroughs to try other methods.

Usually when I'm designing my base, I start with my heat generating stuff off to one side or up high. So, for example, I'll build a couple of coal generators on the right side of the starting biome.  They're connected by heavi-watt wire to smart batteries, so they only run when necessary.  When I need to start a new circuit for, say, an electrolyzer set up, I connect a transformer to the heavy watt wire and run the 'cheap' wire to my new circuit items.  

My power station stays to one side and because of its vertical run, I can add in lots of other stuff.

Spoiler

 

[Jigsawn]

Thanks for the replies, I haven't looked at them deeply yet but I will.

As requested here are some diagrams showing my power grid evolution, feel free to point out where I could have improved, especially regarding smart battery connections, transformers, and individual circuits which needed more constant power than others.

This took way longer than it should have because it's done in Paint!

Setup 1 - Please note that not all circuits had two coal gens. Some had additional hamster wheels and not all used transformers.

Setup 2:

Setup 3:

[llunak]

My base is attached (load time is a bit long, it's around cycle 1200). A couple of things you might find interesting:

- The nat gas generators (left of the base) are the power core. One smart battery controls them so they do not waste nat gas (probably not relevant at this point but it saved a lot of gas earlier).

- Coal generators next to them are back up for when nat gas generators can't keep up. One smart battery controls them (set to lower threshold) so that it kicks in only when the demand is high.

- Petroleum generators at the bottom are a backup of the backup , same principle as with coal generators, smart battery set even lower.

- Oxygen generators (top-left and bottom-right) are almost self-powered, there's an extra smart battery that temporarily recharges from outside if needed.

- I don't have any extra batteries, I consider them wasteful (unnecessary heat and power loss). It's better to conserve the resource used for generating the power.

- Some devices, such as nat gas pumps, have automation controlling them, to reduce their power usage (pumping 10g of gas costs the same power as pumping 500g of gas, so it's better to avoid having them running all the time if the throughput is low).

- Steam turbine is a toy :(.

 

Loveliest Moonbase.sav

[Jigsawn]

Could you folks who use a transformer/power shutoff setup explain it a bit more simply (or just show me a diagram) as I'm finding it hard to picture how it works.

Sounds like smart batteries on all gens are a good way to go, even just a single one to stop extra fuel being wasted if there's a lull in demand.

I've been following the smart battery thread with interest. I hadn't considered you could use them as a way to regulate what generators come online based on demand.

Could someone give me a picture example of how you'd hook the batteries and generators to the grid? I'm assuming each battery is connected to the grid as a whole rather than being behind a transformer? And each smart battery is automated to a different generator/group of generators?

So if I am understanding this right with how the logic works, say you have 3 smart batteries. Battery A is on 80-100 hooked to a nat gas generator. Battery B is 60-80 hooked to a coal generator. Battery C is 0-60 hooked up to a hamster wheel.

So here are the steps for the smart battery example, correct me if I'm wrong:

    1 - If you have plenty of power overall, all the batteries will be on full power with excess power going to the grid.

    2 - At low power demands the nat gas gen will keep going most of the time to keep Battery A always full and therefore the grid topped up, whilst the other batteries remain full.

    3 - If the power drain on the grid goes up, the nat gas gen will be running all the time to maintain Battery A. Now the coal gen also kicks in because Battery B has fallen to below 80 charge.

    4 - If the power demand gets low again, Battery B will reach 80 charge and the coal generator shuts off. Now the Nat gas generator is keeping everything going by itself.

    5 - If the power demand gets really high, the hamster wheel will activate in order to meet Battery C's needs, but like the coal gen, deactivate once power demands fall again.

 Am I getting that sort of right? If so, it's a cool solution. 

 

[beowulf2010]

26 minutes ago, Jigsawn said:

Could you folks who use a transformer/power shutoff setup explain it a bit more simply (or just show me a diagram) as I'm finding it hard to picture how it works.

Whoops, sorry. I gave up on my last base due to a couple important waterlocks randomly freezing (95C steam on one side and the ice was -14C? Yikes) and then forgot I meant to show you a couple things.

The general theory is that you have a smart battery between the generator bank and your main power line that controls when the generators run. Then you have branches off the main trunk line that run to each individual circuit's transformer. There is an automated shutoff on the branch feeding the transformer that is controlled by another smart battery *behind* the transformer.

So it goes: generator -> smart battery -> trunk line -> branch line -> shutoff -> transformer -> smart battery -> 1kW of stuff

Here's something i just threw together in debug mode purely for illustrative purposes.

From top to bottom is my basic generator bank (coal, but works for everything except for steam, which I haven't played with), the condensed transformer/smart battery that will literally be littered throughout the outside of my base, and finally one spread out to more easily see the wiring in case the overlays aren't clear enough.

Spoiler

Normal view:

 

Power Overlay:

 

Automation Overlay:

In general, my generator bank smart batteries are set to turn on at various percentages based to control which banks turn on first and which are "saved" for high demand.

On the smart batteries attached to the transformers, I generally have them set at on at 20% and off at 90%.  Why?  No real reason. Thinking about it, it might make sense to boost the power on percentage to 50%. They'll recharge more often but will have more of a buffer if I'm not paying attention and part of my power grid isn't responding to a high demand.

Also, I tend to hide all of this outside of my base and run normal Electrical Wire through my insulated walls so that I don't have to mess with insulating the Heavy-Watt Joint Plates or deal with extra (minor) heat.

Now, I'm far from an expert in this game, but this has worked very well for me.  And the best part is that nothing individually takes up much room so I can put pieces wherever I need them and still be able to build some fancy centralized power plant later.