Factorio Forums

I was testing how radars draw power when connected to two seperate electric networks and I got some odd results:

I set up a system with some radars connected to two networks, one network with steam engines and one with solar panels. I expected that the radars would first draw maximum power from the solar panels, because that's how they are prioritised when in the same network. Instead, they drew maximum power from the steam engines, and only took power from the solar panels when the steam engines reached capacity.

Hm, that's indeed strange. I've never seen this before. Could you post some images of the setup and the electric network GUI (which you can access by clicking on a power pole). And what exactly do you mean with 2 seperated networks? Do you have two power poles per solar panel which aren't connected?

I don't know what I did, but I managed to bump it into behaving correctly. Here are the pictures:
The radars are connected to both electric networks, but the networks are not connected to each other. At top, steam engine, at bottom, solar panels. Each network is not capable of generating all the power for the radars on it's own, but together they can.
The steam engine is running at capacity, and the radars are only taking a small amount of power from the solar panels.
Then at some point while moving things around, it changed to the correct behaviour:
The solar panels are supplying all their power to the radars. The steam engine is only supplying a little power, to make up the deficit.

Interesting, if we could figure out how the prioritising works we could have seperated networks for our factorys, so if the main supply falls there is still the "core" network for the serious stuff (don't know what, maybe ammo-production?). I also ask myself what happens with accumulators. Can one network surge power, while the other loads it? (I have no access to my PC, so I'm not able to test this)

EDIT: Nevermind, I've found the reason for this behaviour. Look at this thread: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=4814 Seems to be well known, thought we've just discovered something revolutionary

I can't consistently replicate which network the consumers prefer to draw power from.
One some tests, the switch between networks seems to happen randomly. On others, I can control the switch by the order in which I disconnect power poles. And sometimes I can't get it to happen at all.
This is quite interesting, obviously something is determining network priority, and if it is order of creation then... what are the rules for how the creation number is transferred when connecting and disconnecting networks? How could you transfer a later creation number to an older network to give it lower priority?

of course, the game is not designed to power one consumer from two seperate networks, and at the moment the advantage is not obvious... but maybe if I know exactly how it works I can think of a use for it