Factorio Forums

Playing with my Power Grid (All the disruptions to Production)

I wanted to Reduce my Steam Power Production (Amazing amount of pollution comes from this area) to the most negligible amount without using a Clock.

With the help of a coding rule that dose not allow accumulators to charge each other and the distance power-lines join and provide power at i can separate the Networks and still provide power from both Solar and Steam Power.

Still Experimenting But with this Design you can segment Dedicated Power to areas and yet Still use Steam to cover the Spikes of you mucking around with layout design, Even limit the power of your steam engines (Due to the accumulators providing 300 kw Each)

Click to See the full width of each pic because it gets cut off.

Positioning of Power


Daytime Power


Sub Divisions


Network Primary Stats


Network Redundant Stats


3Mw Radar


Edit: Uploading Imgs the Properway

You may want to check whether others can view your pictures, as I get this in Chrome:

403. That’s an error.

Your client does not have permission to get URL /9HAC4oRLOwEpSsZj3LEHdOL2_Pvq9ELMWW4YU-v-Rw4YlNyXSrGJUhebcB1jYTmRIYwGYaZ1PQs=w961-h646 from this server. (Client IP address: 99.246.119.2)

Forbidden That’s all we know.

Same with Firefox

Werezwolf: You just forgot to share your files/directory.

Ahhhh i tryed to use google drive and upload them that way unfortunetly not. anyway heres to experimentation and doing things the proper way.

And Sorry for the Delayed Edit Cheers Everyone.

I'm using a similar setup... but with a much larger backup...

With one difference: I placed 2 substations right next to each other and placed the accumulators in the overlapping area of those both substations so both substations cover all the accumulators and then I make sure that those 2 substations aren't connected with each other:



Then I connect one substation with the steam engines and the other substation with the Solar energy providing grid. That way you can easily expand the accumulator-array and don't have to care about the electric pole mess. I made a blueprint for that and the only thing I have to do manually is disconnect the substations from each other and connect them manually with the network they belong to.

This way I have seperated my entire base into different grids of different priority:

Priority 0: Back up grid with Steam Engines that only provides energy to Priority 1 grid if Priority 0 grid isn't able to produce enough energy itself.
Priority 1: Solar panels and their accumulators to carry me through the night, Defense mechanisms like Laser Turrets, Outposts/Mining sites, smelters and ammunition producing factories for something like gun turrets or landmines when I feel like I want to use that. xD
Priority 2: All the other factories and assembly lines as well as Radars and other stuff that I don't care about if it gets shut/slowed down during peaks. In other words anything that's not necessary for survival.

In case of extreme peaks like for example if the monster hive next to my base decides to attack first priority 0 tries to kick in and provide even more energy with the Steam engine back-up for grid 1 for the turrets/mining/smelters/ammunition production while priority 2 will slowly begin to shut down because the accumulators in between 1 and 2 will be drained as well.

Works perfectly.

If I run out of coal I might even think about putting the Pumpjacks, Refineries, Cracking and Solid fuel production into grid 0 so that grid 0 is able to self-sustain itself without coal. That's something I still have to do but I would have to reroute some stuff for that. ^^

did you look at/no of "How to switch off steam engines in the night, when enough accumulator capacity is available?" on the wiki
https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... Production

Lee_newsum wrote:did you look at/no of "How to switch off steam engines in the night, when enough accumulator capacity is available?" on the wiki
https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... Production

Yes... Werezwolf did look at that. He mentioned it in his original post and he didn't like the solution proposed on the Wiki... neither do I... So we came to this other solution by seperating the steam engines from the grid via accumulators independently from each other. xD

Only limitation is that an accumulator can't load another accumulator... but that's fine with my setup because I need the steam engines only for spikes made by laser turrets anyways.


Let's hope the devs implement the improved logic-circuitry system for the liquid/power-system soon so we don't have to rely on ugly inserter tricks anymore.

That's a bit tricky to understand at first, but I think I've got it now.

The priority for electricity is solar panels, steam generators and then accumulators. In your system, the only demand for power from the steam generators is to charge the 3 accumulators. Otherwise, they do not "see" any other demand since they are on separate power grids. However, the accumulators see both power grids since they are covered by both grids. When solar goes down, the accums "see" the demand and start to discharge. At this point, I would think the steam gens would kick on, but only to recharge the accums that they can "see," a small portion of the overall accum/solar panel power grid. In an emergency, when all of the main system's accums are emptied, the 3 (in werezwolf's system)attached to the steam gens will still be charged since they are continually charged by the steam gens.

However, the accumulators are limited to transmitting 300 kW each. For a standard 10 steam gen configuration, 17 accums would be needed to fully transfer the 5.1 MW power that the steam gens are capable of. That makes Medusalem's configuration a bit more appropriate. Although, having too many transitional accums cost more in energy leaks at night time.

Definitely better than the "clock" system. Although a little bit of power is leaked through to keep the limited number of accums charged at night, I don't see any delay problems that are prone to occur with the "clock" and its need to load and heat water before coming fully online.

You should post this on the wiki.

I don't think there is any difference effectively created with the accumulators. As soon as they start to discharge, the steam engines will come on at 100% to recharge them which entirely defeats the purpose of airgapping them.

Also,

DerivePi wrote:However, the accumulators are limited to transmitting 300 kW each.

You'll have to have a lot of them for a decent sized factory.

DerivePi wrote:You should post this on the wiki.

I Did under the talk tab because i wanted a few other people to come to some sort of conclusion lol.

-root wrote:I don't think there is any difference effectively created with the accumulators. As soon as they start to discharge, the steam engines will come on at 100% to recharge them which entirely defeats the purpose of airgapping them.

I'm creating a few networks from my main one, Sub networks that don't need extra power from my steam engines like my 8 Radar system that i posted its powered during day but doesn't take from the steam engine pool due to this observation Accumulators do not charge other Accumulators.

-root wrote:

DerivePi wrote:However, the accumulators are limited to transmitting 300 kW each.

You'll have to have a lot of them for a decent sized factory.

Yes agreed they are a limit and there only meant to provide a boost for unexpected power consumption (Mass drone usage or Turrets)

Ive made a bigger example and going to test a few other extra titbits about it.



I quite like this personally for the Sub-networks that i make and i believe it has a more responsive advantage then the proposed clock system on the wiki currently while keeping that pollution cloud minimal.

-root wrote:I don't think there is any difference effectively created with the accumulators. As soon as they start to discharge, the steam engines will come on at 100% to recharge them which entirely defeats the purpose of airgapping them.

Also,

DerivePi wrote:However, the accumulators are limited to transmitting 300 kW each.

You'll have to have a lot of them for a decent sized factory.

With only 17 accumulators attached to 10 steam engines, the steam engines run at 100%.

With 34 accumulators (half attached to steam engines), the steam engines run at 50%.

With 207 accumulators (8% attached to steam engines), the steam engines run at 8%, less than a solar panel.

You essentially get 102 accumulators (= full night of steam power) in emergency backup for the cost of running 10 steam engines at a minimal level.

DerivePi wrote:However, the accumulators are limited to transmitting 300 kW each. For a standard 10 steam gen configuration, 17 accums would be needed to fully transfer the 5.1 MW power that the steam gens are capable of. That makes Medusalem's configuration a bit more appropriate. Although, having too many transitional accums cost more in energy leaks at night time.

Yupp basically that's why I used the bigger array of Accumulators covered by the 2 substations. If you want to use the full potential of let's say 4x8 Steam engines or something you need way more accumulators to get their 32*510kW = 16320kW pushed over to the other grid in case it is needed. So that's why I have 50 accumulators... 50*300kW = 15000kW. The rest of what the Steamengines could provide is basically reserved for their own Boiler Inserters and Coalmines.

-root wrote:I don't think there is any difference effectively created with the accumulators. As soon as they start to discharge, the steam engines will come on at 100% to recharge them which entirely defeats the purpose of airgapping them.

Yeah as soon as night kicks in and the solar panels stop to provide power to the main grid and power is drawn from the accumulators the Steam Engines will kick in to keep the accumulators they see charged. Can't really prevent that from happening without using a clock. That's a minimum amount of leakage you have to accept in that setup.



The only thing you can do to minimize that leakage effect is either to have a large amount of accumulators for your solar panels so that the accumulators to seperate your steam engines become negligible in comparison and sort of balance out little spikes. But then it might be already a good idea to switch over to full solar powered energy and remove the Steam Engines altogether.

... OR ...

To seperate parts of your factory with other accumulators. Since accumulators can't charge other accumulators the Steam Engines will never kick in for those parallel subgrids.



It's all about the priority... about what you place in which grid. If you place your whole factory in the same grid as the solar panels it doesn't make sense at all because then the steam engines will always run at 100% instead of the minimum leakage amount.



The advantage of the setup is that the steam engines will kick in instantly during peaks rather than having to wait for the boilers to heat up first.
The disadvantage is that you have a minimum amount of leakage and that you have to sort of care what you place in the main grid where your solar panels are. because that's what will cause a minimum amount of leakage during the nights. I only use defense mechanisms there and that's perfectly fine for me because I have the steam engines exactly to back up my defense.



In later games I mostly switch over to fully solar powered energy anyways... but somehow I'm always waiting for that until it becomes unavoidable... Since I hate the massive waste of space the solar energy causes. It's so not worth it for some reason... probably because I start to miss the occasional biter fights.

Another reason is that I never really managed to control total output of my oil department. Somehow there's always an imbalance in the output that causes me to have too less of either Heavy Oil or Light Oil or Petroleum Gas... so that's why I turn the excess of some stuff into solid fuel and burn that stuff in the boilers so that no output of the refineries is being blocked by the excess of another one.

I have fiddled around with an Excel sheet that calculates the total output of each liquid with varying amounts of Refinieries and Chemical Plants to crack stuff... and still the theory doesn't fully catch up with what I'm really consuming. The calculation is quite exact already but after a few hours the imbalance still starts to sum up and I've to manually change the amount of active cracking and/or solid fuel production.

That's another reason why I hope that logic circuitry for liquids is coming soon so I can turn on/off the flow of fluids depending on how much I have stored of each fluid and better control how much is cracked up and turned into solid fuel.

DaveMcW wrote:

-root wrote:I don't think there is any difference effectively created with the accumulators. As soon as they start to discharge, the steam engines will come on at 100% to recharge them which entirely defeats the purpose of airgapping them.

Also,

DerivePi wrote:However, the accumulators are limited to transmitting 300 kW each.

You'll have to have a lot of them for a decent sized factory.

With only 17 accumulators attached to 10 steam engines, the steam engines run at 100%.

With 34 accumulators (half attached to steam engines), the steam engines run at 50%.

With 207 accumulators (8% attached to steam engines), the steam engines run at 8%, less than a solar panel.

You essentially get 102 accumulators (= full night of steam power) in emergency backup for the cost of running 10 steam engines at a minimal level.

Can you explain this again for me? Explain it like i'm 4...

I dont understand what you are trying to say, are you saying accumulators boost a percentage of what steam engines produce?

I dont think so.

If 10 steam engines produce 5mw and your factory uses up 5, your accums are not storing anything even if you have 1 million accums.

-root wrote: Can you explain this again for me? Explain it like i'm 4...

Go ask Mommy...

At night, energy is drawn from all of the accumulators equally. The steam gens only charge the accumulators on their power grid.

Ok, try this - a new party trick. Using multiple straws, you are drinking equally from 12 cans of beer at the same time. However, you know your Aussie appetite won't go dry, because one of those cans of beer is constantly being filled by a keg. So, while the keg only has to refill a small portion of the one can of beer while there is still some liquid in the other 11 cans. Once the other 11 go dry, the keg will then need to provide the full amount.

DerivePi wrote:At night, energy is drawn from all of the accumulators equally. The steam gens only charge the accumulators on their power grid.

Ok, try this - a new party trick. Using multiple straws, you are drinking equally from 12 cans of beer at the same time. However, you know your Aussie appetite won't go dry, because one of those cans of beer is constantly being filled by a keg. So, while the keg only has to refill a small portion of the one can of beer while there is still some liquid in the other 11 cans. Once the other 11 go dry, the keg will then need to provide the full amount.

DerivePi got it.

MeduSalem wrote:

DerivePi wrote:At night, energy is drawn from all of the accumulators equally. The steam gens only charge the accumulators on their power grid.

Ok, try this - a new party trick. Using multiple straws, you are drinking equally from 12 cans of beer at the same time. However, you know your Aussie appetite won't go dry, because one of those cans of beer is constantly being filled by a keg. So, while the keg only has to refill a small portion of the one can of beer while there is still some liquid in the other 11 cans. Once the other 11 go dry, the keg will then need to provide the full amount.

DerivePi got it.

Everything can be explained by a beer analogy

I like how Australian = Beer to DerivePi.

I do understand though. You're saying that those steam engines are being split equally by the accumulators?

-root wrote:I like how Australian = Beer to DerivePi.

Not just beer. Crocodiles and hot women too