[0.17.79-0] Fueled Inserters stop working

[Takkeeshian]

Hello There,
I´ve been playing with a friend in a LAN-connection, when once some of our fueled inserters ran out of fuel. They were filling coal into boilers, so they could and should have fueled themselves. Is it that when the desire of the boilers is higher than the loading rate of the inserter, that the inserter stops fueling itself, because of prioritizing the boiler? Once I replaced the inserters, they started working, but then, after reloading and some time, they just stopped again. out of nowhere. So I filled them with each 50 coal and waited, but they stopped again, seemingly without refueling themselves.
blue belt, fueled inserter, boiler powering two steam engines. 140 boilers, 280 steam engines, higher power demand than production.
Is this a bug or just the fueled inserter being too slow for the task and fueling itself?

[valneq]

Burner inserters are kind of slow. This can result in problems with items on blue belts running at full speed. Can you check whether the burner inserters are able to grab items from the blue belt at all?
I suspect that the burner inserters are not fast enough to do that. Then they can neither fuel themselves nor the boilers.
Or are the items on the belt backed up, so that the problem is rather that the burner inserter is grabbing items from the blue belt and putting it into the boilers, but only not into themselves?

[Serenity]

The blue belt is definitely the problem here. Red belt works.

If downgrading the belt isn't an option, consider using normal inserters in a separate solar powered grid. Or have some steam engines power only the inserters

[SirGouki]

There's a couple of ways to deal with this: 1) put yellow belts where all the burner inserters are so the belt contents slow down for them (this will also cause a bit of a slow down on the belts when they are full, but they'll rush to the yellow section when its no longer backed up), this is what I currently do; 2) run a seperate power grid thats using burner inserters to fuel some boilers, and that powers only your coal mine and a set of electric inserters, which will in turn feed another set up for your other grid: everything else. This method is what I'm switching over to as it will ensure the base is powered back up properly in the event that a coal shortage occurs (as only the burner inserters will work at first, so coal will build back up while the power comes back online, instead of the entire base trying to run at once and causing other problems). The benefit to this set up is that if you run out of coal due to no more to mine at that location, your boilers will only run until you're not consuming steam anymore, so if you pay attention to your coal production (use P), you'll have enough power to set up a new coal mining area before major problems occur, assuming you cut off power to your electric inserters once you start to run out of coal (if you wait that long, you could start another mining operation to feed it before you run out, it's up to you). You can use the circuit network to automate this, by checking a specific conveyor for coal to make sure its backed up enough, and if that conveyor isn't full, it turns off the electric inserters.

Of course, completely switching over to solar arrays will alleviate all these problems, cause you should really only be using burner inserters to feed boilers, and if you switch over to completely solar you massively reduce the need for coal for a while. Converting excess oil to solid fuel and using that for smelting until you're running electric furnaces will reduce your need for coal down to a hand full of applications which specifically require coal (such as making grenades, and one or 2 of the oil products).

[Ranger_Aurelien]

The blue belt is definitely the problem here. Red belt works.

If downgrading the belt isn't an option, consider using normal inserters in a separate solar powered grid. Or have some steam engines power only the inserters

Another option to use instead/inaddition I've used is to have red reach inserters add coal directly to the burner inserters, belt fed from the same fuel as the coal power plants. That way the red inserters will likely pause holding a unit of fuel waiting to insert it into the burnerinserters as soon as it has space.

[astroshak]

A yellow belt of Coal can fuel 33 or 34 Boilers. A Red Belt of Coal can feed 66 or 67 Boilers. Ok, probably slightly less, due to the Burner Inserters wanting their occasional due.

Solid Fuel can feed 100 Boilers on a Yellow Belt.

If I’m still moving Coal for burning (I find it more economical to Liquify it, and convert it to Solid Fuel, once I unlock that tech) and I need to use Red or Blue belts to move that coal, I will use Splitters to divide that Red Belt into two Yellow Belts (or that Blue Belt into one Yellow and one Red Belt, then that Red Belt into two more Yellow Belts) and feed that many boiler arrays. Burner Inserters are too slow for Blue Belts. Red Belts are actually rather chancey as well. They work best on Yellow Belts.

When I upgrade from Coal to Solid Fuel, I will often put a second pair of 1/20/40 arrays downbelt of the initial array pair. There just is no reason to use Red or Blue belts in a boiler setup.

[Ranger_Aurelien]

the entire base trying to run at once and causing other problems). The benefit to this set up is that if you run out of coal due to no more to mine at that location, your boilers will only run until you're not consuming steam anymore, so if you pay attention to your coal production (use P), you'll have enough power

Good advice!
Another aid for this would be to set the priority on splitters so your power plants have priority on each coal belt at splits. This has the side effect of gently shutting down parts of the factory, saving power when demand gets "too great", buying you time to add more coal before a cascade shutdown develops.

Another suggestion would be to set an alarm when an accumulator on your main grid drops below a threshhold. (say 80%)

https://wiki.factorio.com/Circuit_network