Lack of power

[factoriobiker]

I have so many accumulators, maybe 100 and also solar cells
but still at night battery gets juiced up.....

also as you can see I have so much power at disposal but accus are not filling that fast, what to do?

https://pasteboard.co/JrZkR23.png

[Serenity]

Probably too many accumulators, so they don't have time to charge fully. You only need 0.84 accumulators for every solar cell. Some extra doesn't necessarily hurt - for example for lasers - but you also need the power capacity to charge them. You can see what's going on better on a larger timescale that covers an entire day

It also helps to have large coal power plant and set it to backup power with an SR-latch. Then it can take over when the accumulators are empty. And it's a good indicator for when you need more solar cells


Electric furnaces are not a straight upgrade for steel furnaces by the way. They aren't any faster than them. They are more useful for their module slots.

[Squelch]

That power graph snapshot of 5 seconds shows that you are producing as much electricity as is being consumed. There does not appear to be enough surplus to charge the accumulators. As already suggested, a longer snapshot - 10 minutes and even 10 hours will give a better understanding of how well you are doing.

It also seems that you have fallen into the trap of trying to go fully electric too soon. Serenity is right, electric furnaces may look appetizing, but they do put a large drain on the electric network, and can cause brown-outs slowing everything down. If you have enough coal, keep to steel furnaces for a little longer, and add steam engine generators while you build up a larger inventory of solar panels. If you are not in peaceful mode, then laser turrets can and will drain the network very quickly, so large banks of accumulators are very useful. However, they only charge when there is excess power that is not being used by the factory. It is all too easy to enter into a death spiral of brown-outs and black-outs by loading up the electric network too early without some steam generators, and ultimately nuclear to keep things alive.

[Yoyobuae]

Electric furnaces are good because they can use modules. So load them up with some efficiency module 1s.

You could cut their power use from 8.1MW down to 3.24MW. Along the way do the same for Assembly Machine 2s (5.2MW --> 2.08 MW) and Electric Mining Drills (4.9MW --> 0.98MW). Specially for the Electric Furnaces, each Efficiency Module will save more power than what a Solar Panel could produce on average and both of those cost similar amount of resources.

[SoShootMe]

I have so many accumulators, maybe 100 and also solar cells
but still at night battery gets juiced up.....

also as you can see I have so much power at disposal but accus are not filling that fast, what to do?

https://pasteboard.co/JrZkR23.png

Your image shows 341 solar panels (producing 20.5MW), 611 accumulators (consuming 6.0MW) and 29 steam engines (producing 16.2MW) over the last five seconds on the electric network.

The second production figure (220MW in your image) can be misleading. When you have accumulators and excess production capacity from other sources to charge them ("Accumulator charge" full or accumulators consuming power), it includes the potential output from each accumulator. In other words, it's the peak power your network could supply right now: at the time of your image, 20.5MW from solar panels (341 * 60kW "Power output"), 16.2MW from steam engines (total of each steam engine's "Available power") and 183.3MW from accumulators (611 * 300kW "Max output").

Accumulators will charge more slowly if:

• There are more of them. You seem to have a significant excess; as mentioned by Serenity, 0.84 accumulators per solar panel is sufficient for a constant load with no energy source except solar panels, and a few extra can be useful.
• There is less excess production from other sources to charge them. In your case, this looks marginal. When you have solar panels, you need to consider a full day/night cycle. Each solar panel produces an average of 42kW, so your 341 will produce 14.3MW average. Steam engines should be able to produce the same power day or night. At your 16.2MW, that makes a total of 30.5MW. However, over the five seconds in your image, excluding the 6MW to charge accumulators, your demand is 30.7MW.

Other things, in addition to the option of efficiency modules mentioned by Yoyobuae:

• Your steam engines are not working at capacity. 29 steam engines should be able to produce ~26MW, but yours are only producing ~16MW. Perhaps you could get more power by adding boilers (the ideal ratio is one boiler to two steam engines), or you may be short of fuel for your boilers, or need to connect your boilers and steam engines differently (a layout like https://wiki.factorio.com/Power_product ... gine_power works well).
• You have many laser turrets, which have a significant drain. You may not need so many, especially if you mix in some flamethrower turrets.