Factorio Forums

I find it difficult in game to make sure power poles connect in more than one place. It is pretty common for me to take out a section and loose power to half my base.
Are there any techniques that make it easier to design a power system with such redundancy?

You could drop a train station as a map label to mark the location of your breakpoints or use some fancy flooring to make a map label.

Outside of that...use more poles.

I run large poles along my main bus and branch off smaller lines, just like materials.

mooklepticon wrote:I run large poles along my main bus and branch off smaller lines, just like materials.

This is a good method. I so the same thing pretty much. I use medium poles rather than the large ones (just my own personal preference). Just leave room to run them down the side of your bus, and then split off from there for each manufacturing section. If you want to be doubly sure, then you could also make connections between each manufacturing area as well.

Isn't it also possible to take a regular copper cable (not the colored ones) and click it on two poles to make a new connection, assuming they are in range of each other? I'm pretty sure I have done this in the past to ensure multiple connections for redundancy.

Ranakastrasz wrote:I find it difficult in game to make sure power poles connect in more than one place. It is pretty common for me to take out a section and loose power to half my base.
Are there any techniques that make it easier to design a power system with such redundancy?

Just keep your primary connectivity via large poles. Due to their long wires, situations when you want to remove them will be rare and each time you remove a large pole, you relink those were connected to it via large pole placed somewhere else.

edit: sometimes your electric networks become distinct, but not totally and things appear to be working. best way to detect this is to click on different power poles and check if all of them report same number of solar panels.

I would advise against such redundancy onto fine levels.

I would make a long-range network along the rails and put the redundancy there (loops, etc.).

From that network I would split the outposts and sub-factories each by exactly one and only one connection.
By that you get the option to switch off a specific part of the base (even by a remote data-connection when the electric network switches are there).

I would also suggest to put red and green wire to the long-range-network from the start...It's quite tedious to build that in later