Power 'cycling' controls?

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webkilla
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Power 'cycling' controls?

Post by webkilla »

Heyo

I have a nice big ol' factory, loads of accumulators, and huge solar farm that covers all my daylight power needs and then some, and then a solid backup of boilers/steam gens

however

when nightfall comes, its the steamers that kick in - not the accumulators. I want that to be the other way around.

Now, my boilers and steam gens are tied into my power-grid too tightly for me to me untie them without having to waste waaaaay too much time.


Is there a way to prioritize power sources? I have not looked into this yet - but I'm thinking making some kind of coal-supply bottle neck tied to how much juice is stored in the accummulators, and then having that open the flood-gates the moment the accumulator power levels are under a certain threshold. Is that even possible?

DerGraue
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Re: Power 'cycling' controls?

Post by DerGraue »

Just put a accumulator next to an offshore pump. Connect the pump with a red or green wire. Set the pump to enable if A<10 or whatever you choose. A is the accumulator charge and the pump will only enable if it drops below 10%. Connect all your pumps like that with the same wire or another accu.

webkilla
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Re: Power 'cycling' controls?

Post by webkilla »

DerGraue wrote:Just put a accumulator next to an offshore pump. Connect the pump with a red or green wire. Set the pump to enable if A<10 or whatever you choose. A is the accumulator charge and the pump will only enable if it drops below 10%. Connect all your pumps like that with the same wire or another accu.
brilliant! thank you

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Re: Power 'cycling' controls?

Post by webkilla »

Ok, I've finally had time to test this.


I can't seem to get my accumulator to output a proper signal.


if i have an accumulator next to a water pump, and connect them with red wire - then the accumulator claims to be outputting a signal from 100 to 0, based on its charge level. It uses signal A.


Then I tell the water pump to have activation condition called "A < 10" - so it'll only start chugging water when the A is less than 10.

However, when I then test this... the water pump never activates. The accumulator drains completely, and the pump doesn't start.

Please advice.

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impetus maximus
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Re: Power 'cycling' controls?

Post by impetus maximus »

you only have one accumilator connected to the pump correct?
screenshots of your setting?

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Re: Power 'cycling' controls?

Post by Qon »

This has been asked before at least once but most likely it has been discussed and solved in many ways many times over since the dawn of factorio-time.
"Optimal" solution by Qon.

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Re: Power 'cycling' controls?

Post by Rakshasa »

steam
I use this compact power switch circuit to decide when to connect steam engines/turbines to the power grid. It makes sure to fully recharge accumulators once activated.
emergency
This is for emergency power from accumulators.

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Re: Power 'cycling' controls?

Post by ManaUser »

Don't know why your pump wouldn't work, but this was my solution:
Power.jpg
Power.jpg (48.22 KiB) Viewed 7940 times
Accumulator: Output: (A)
Decider: (A) < 10, Output (B) = 1
Arithmetic: Input: (B) * -5 Output (A)
Power Switch: (B) = 1
Blueprint String
Then you isolate the steam engines to the right side of the power switch, and everything else to the left. You don't strictly need the combinators, but if you put the (A) < 10 test directly on the switch it will flicker on and off rapidly when it gets to 10%. The combinators in this example are set to make stay on until accumulators are back up to 15%.

Edit: Corrected (B) * -1 to (B) * -5. Thanks Ifalna.
Last edited by ManaUser on Sat Sep 02, 2017 1:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Ifalna
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Re: Power 'cycling' controls?

Post by Ifalna »

Accumulator: Output: [A]
Decider: [A] < 10, Output = 1
Arithmetic: Input: * -1 Output A
Power Switch: = 1

Good solution, ManaUser! I was looking for sth. like that myself but my engineering skills are too rusty to come to the conclusion that multiple signals routed to the same input actually get calculated on their own.

What the above does is generate a phantom capacity signal. Once accus reach 10 the arithmetic unit substracts 1, so the phantom signal is 9. Steam machines push them back above 10, phantom signal deactivates and resulting (real) capacity is 11.

Instead of a rapid flicker around a fraction of a % (nasty!) you now get slower ones around 1%.

If you want 5% you have to input "* -5" into your arithmetic unit. I have not yet tested whether negative values are accepted, theoretically you could input a -90 to enforce a full charge before steam machines are shut down.
The backbone of modern industrial society is, and for the foreseeable future will be, the use of electrical Power.

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Re: Power 'cycling' controls?

Post by Theurgist »

I use a pretty simple but really effective solution; I read an accumulator signal (0-100) and wire up all the inserters for my boilers to insert if Power less than X.
Approx 20% of my total boilers are set to turn on below 80%, another 20 at 60%, and 40%, and the remaining 40% if below 20%.

This means that I only run as many boilers as are needed to ensure my Power storage gets topped up, and have a larger boost is getting really low on juice. If running all boilers and power is still dropping it triggers a Low power alarm to let me know I need to expand power production. Everything in my factory runs off a single power grid.

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Ifalna
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Re: Power 'cycling' controls?

Post by Ifalna »

While that should avoid the rapid switching problem, that much effort is unnecessary, because heat/steam in boilers does not decay if it isn't used by the steam machines and boilers (contrary to nuclear reactors) only burn fuel at the rate that is actually drawn by your system.
The overall resource consumption between all boilers running at low load or few running on high load are the same.
The backbone of modern industrial society is, and for the foreseeable future will be, the use of electrical Power.

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Re: Power 'cycling' controls?

Post by ManaUser »

Ifalna wrote:If you want 5% you have to input "* -5" into your arithmetic unit. I have not yet tested whether negative values are accepted, theoretically you could input a -90 to enforce a full charge before steam machines are shut down.

Oops, yeah I meant * -5 that was a typo (or "thinko" :) ) on my part. I'm pretty sure the blueprint I posted actually uses -5.

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Re: Power 'cycling' controls?

Post by SuicideJunkie »

Ifalna wrote:While that should avoid the rapid switching problem, that much effort is unnecessary, because heat/steam in boilers does not decay if it isn't used by the steam machines and boilers (contrary to nuclear reactors) only burn fuel at the rate that is actually drawn by your system.
The overall resource consumption between all boilers running at low load or few running on high load are the same.
It does solve the problem.
Personally, I prefer the logic based hysteresis, since it comes at no additional cost when you bake it into the load part of an isolated solar+accum ideal battery level calculator.

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Re: Power 'cycling' controls?

Post by DeathMers »

I figured out that with big power drain you have to add more stuff to equation, like coal and other fuels consumption, production, storage... That problem get more and more complex over time not only in the matter of power supply priority, but also resource consumption priority and logistic capabilities (bots and belts).

If you connect water pump to accumulator, you have to do it with every pump in layout, in the end there could be hundreds of connections like this, and every change you would like to make you have to do manually with every single pump, and this is real pain...

I think the better solution is separate and control. All my power supply layouts are built in separated locations, so they are easy to factory grid separation - just open map, turn on power grid connections button, take copper wire and according to map disconnect all power grid connections which are connected to power farm, then create only one with power switch (or more power switches), then connect power switch to whatever you like (combinator, acumulator, factorio power grid....) only like that you will have full control over power farm, and that control could be automated via combinators or manually. It is better to have steam and nuclear separated, so you can control and prioritize solid fuels consumption; solar +accu can be connected to factory grid all the time.
You will end up in situation, you will have few switches, controlling one farm - one to manual control, one switch to accu support, one switch to night timer, one switch to coal consumption priority... Connected in serie or parallel... There is lot of fun with power switches ;)

If you have "in-line" nuclear layout with ideal ratio that doesnt work on full during day (cause solar), you can exceed that ideal ratio by building storage tanks and more steam turbines, separadted from base layout by pump with decider. It can store some reservoir energy thru day and use it in night.

In my case i have ended up with over 1M coal stored with no use and increasing tendency. Without proper control i would probably never burn that amount of coal.

Base control i use is "tick timer" on steam farm power switch. It counts to 25k ticks (a day cycle) and it is set to output signal among #-25k to turn on power switch. The lack of energy in main grid can be recognized on acumulators - they have last priority to recharge, so if your acumulators start recharge and dont finish up with 100%, or if your acumulators dont start to recharge, when solar is on 100%, you can build more power plants, or set new low tick value. Manual adjust once for a while works fine for me. But in the end you will have to build more power sources, this situation is inevitable.

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