Are they supposed to do this?!?!

[partyjp]

so as all of you.. i have bought Factorio and played nothing else since

but.. i was building my factory/fortress and then this happend...(see image) http://i.imgur.com/T51aQvD.jpg
it doesn't matter where i place them.. they just do the thing they are doing in the picture.. about every 5 real time seconds

please someone explain if they are supposed to do this and if they are supposed to do this, why does it look like they are about to explode in a massive EMP pulse...

[FishSandwich]

Are you talking about the accumulators? If so then yes, they are storing electricity to use later. That's the whole point of them.

[BurnHard]

if they do that for very short time (periodically), that means they discharge and charge to cover some spikes in energy demand.

Mine do that if my maximum energy producing capacity is very near the actual demand. And when suddenly eg a lot of laser cannons fire, they need more energy than my generators can produce, so my accus discharge for these few seconds the lasers fire, then they are fully charged again. Working as intended.

[partyjp]

so it is like an animation to show they are putting electricity back in the network??

[Drury]

They're charging up.

Discharge animation is more intensive.

[partyjp]

dury.. yeah that is what it looks like...

so they are just discharging??
i thought it was something bad (cause of many sparks)

[Gregorovitch]

If they are fleshing away regularly it may be because your overall power generation is about equal to your power demand - basically they are charging up a bit when demand is slightly lower than supply, then releasing their stored charge when demand slightly exceeds supply. This would mean they fire up more or less all the time. If you increase power supply they should fully charge up and then sit there quiet until you get a demand spike (e.g. all your lasers going off during a biter attack).

[partyjp]

yep i understand now
thanks all of you

(no need for further comments)