Nuclear Emergency Backup Power/No Fuel Cell Waste

[Tiny Rick]

So, I'm a new player to Factorio, and I've been tinkering with an emergency backup nuclear power supply for my existing 30MW solar power farm. I would like some input on my current nuclear setup. It's probably not very optimal, and there is definitely room for improvement, but the way it SHOULD work, is that the water pumps fill two tanks, which act like enormous pipes, allowing unrestricted flow to the heat exchangers. These fill the steam backup tanks up, and there should be more then enough capacity that no energy from the two fuel cells used at a time is wasted. When my 2.1 GJ accumulator banks hit 10%, the small electric pumps at the beginning of each turbine stack should kick on, and since they are sucking directly from the large capacity tanks will provide plenty of steam to all the turbines. I'm sacrificing about 120KW to generate around 160MW, and only when my power supply is low. I currently have to load the fuel manually, but will eventually implement some method of making it automatic when the steam levels in the tanks get low. Suggestions and critiques are welcome.

[MBas]

Hi, you are generraly right . The most "pro" system i ever seen has very similiar system of yours. The autor just make it more smooth and set the pump condition differntly (in range 70-80%, one or two to 70, one to 71 one to 72 etc). This trick simply reduce annoying oscilations in energy system. Another trick could be switch system. Turning on on less the 70% of accu and turning off with more than 80%. This can be done with clever cmbinator system (with about 3 decider combinators).

There are still more ideas . Your reactor is quite huge for supporting 30MW solar farm only. Anyway, if you use solar panels and acumulators also (not only solar panels and nucler power plant as a huge battery) it may be better to build a one little separated power plant with about 5 solars and 4 accu with exactly 5×42kW output (to simulate nearby optimal ratio). Output can be satisfied by 42 always turn on lamps . And then just set condition for your reactor when your main accumulators drop behind the simulator (but its wise to keep it little bit higher). So the reactor will not wait to moment when you are down with electricity, but its just more toleranted to the fact that accumulators are more low during night.

[Tiny Rick]

Thanks for your suggestions. I really like that idea of a rolling startup conditions for each turbine stack, with each kicking on separately if the accumulator bank charge continues to drop despite backup power kicking in. Also, you are right, this setup is way oversized for my factory's current power requirements, but for a reason: I built it this way keeping future expansion in mind, as I am about to begin a massive resource grab/build out. I'm gonna have a lot more power hungry laser turrets and machinery, so I will need a ton of juice in the event something happens to my solar farm. I also just had a semi-catastrophic blackout one night after I overbuilt without realizing it. A minor brownout turned into a tragic blackout when a large assault by the aliens drained my accumulator banks, and my steam engine backup was insufficient to keep up.

[looney]

Switching pumps on and off will leave your turbines empty, so you have to wait for the steam to flow through them before they turn on. Switches don't have that problem, I believe they toggle in a single game tick. So your turbines could be primed and ready to go.

You can set up a "turn on below x, then off at y" with just one decider and one arithmetic combiner. Set the decider to "when (type) <= x, output A", set the arithmetic to "A * (x-y), output (type)". Note that x-y should be a negative number. Now wire the source signal into the decider with one wire color, and the output of the arithmetic combiner with the other color wire. This will keep the input value below x, until the source value reaches y. Wire the output of the decider to the input of the arithmetic combiner and the thing(s) you wish to control.

You can do something similar to send a single tick pulse when a value first hits x, re-arming only when the value hits y. Which is useful for automating fuel loading when you are running low on steam. Basically instead of a negative number in the arithmetic combiner, you use a positive value and slightly different wiring.

[Tiny Rick]

I see where you are going with the switches for the turbines. Do you know if steam flow rate through the turbines gets throttled by their individual capacity, like a pipe would? I put the pumps there not only to act as a valve, but also as an attempt to maximize steam availability in the turbines. If the flow gets throttled, the pumps are redundant, and using switches instead of pumps would definitely be worth doing. If the turbines do not throttle the steam flow like a pipe does, with some slight re-configuring, I could basically start adding on more turbines, using pipe bends as necessary to fit compactly, and the pumps will be there to ensure sufficient flow is available for the stack. As for the automated fuel loading, I think I see where you are going, but I suspect the pulse width of the "on" signal may need to be longer than one tick. Over the weekend I was experimenting with inserters hooked up to a pulse generator to try and optimize consumption of green circuits by my red circuit factories. I found that it needed slightly more than one tick for inserters to kick on and run smoothly. I'm currently just adding a 1 second (30 tick) pulse on the timer after the on signal, though it doesn't need quite that much, its more to smooth out production from gaps in circuit supply. Admittedly, I'm still quite new with the circuit network and logic system, so its possible I'm missing something or made a mistake.