"Big power" options, low UPS hit

[zOldBulldog]

By having my lowest priority factories auto-shutdown when power dips I no longer worry about brown outs or cascade power death.

And I love Nuclear power, as when my low power alarm rings I can simply plop a blueprint (even remotely through the minimap) for a relatively small 4-reactor plant and the 400+ MW it provides quickly and painlessly address the power issue without too much of a distraction from my other work.

But nuclear plants eat at UPS, and at around 3 GW I am starting to worry that UPS problems might not be too far. I know that solar is the traditional answer, but I used it before and I absolutely hate the huge size of the solar fields, the large numbers of bots it takes to build them, and the horridly boring job of placing blueprint after blueprint, or worse... manually landfill ING all that space.

So... I am curious as to what options are there that are:

- Reasonably compact.
- Reasonably fast to add at least half a GW to the capacity.
- Low or no impact to UPS.

I am open to using a mod so long as it achieves the above and it is standalone and not part of a large pack. Also, if it is solar based, it should compact the accumulators too for a complete power solution. I already scanned the mods and to my untrained eye the Advanced Solar mods by Skandragon or rahne look promising, but I wonder if they get solar to the point that it is at the same QOL level of nuclear, or if there are some other options I might be ignoring (wind or geothermal maybe, but I could not tell if they generate enough power in a small enough footprint). Oh, the only large pack I might consider if it addresses this power need is BioIndustries, as it is something I already planned to tinker with sometime in the future (so it would not be a big stretch to use it now).

I am also curious to hear if others are following a similar train of thought as me in this matter.

[evopwr]

I'm curious at what GW nuclear becomes an issue as well.
Current approach is just stick with nuclear until it becomes a problem, then worry about it then
Auto-shutdown: is that by switching power off? I thought that hurt UPS from what I read? Although, I assume you could disable a belt, and cause it to naturally fill up and come to a proper idle state that way.
I know BobsMods have beefed up solar panels - not sure if they meet your needs tho. Cant remember details (I still went for nuclear when I played bobsmods).

[quyxkh]

An efficient nuc design doesn't have to look hacky, just don't pipe steam all over the place (or at all) and you s/b good. By my rough measurements my plants cost about 150µs/GW to run including water supply, and the fuel is basically free. All the steam piping and steam tanking and circuit-controlled turbine switching designs are fascinating, really, but in the end if your nuc plants aren't at or soon to be at 100%, why build them? It's fun figuring out compact, efficent, simple designs too. A 12×12-substation grid of accumulators somewhere for low-overhead power buffering is big but not outrageous and gives you plenty of warning when it's time for another plant.

efficient 1.1gw plant spoiler

snap@T15281333=3648x7584+22.75+19.5,z2.jpg (1.82 MiB) Viewed 6282 times

[zOldBulldog]

Auto-shutdown: is that by switching power off? I thought that hurt UPS from what I read?

I do the following:

- Monitor the power on an accumulator.
- Choose a % of charge for shutoff of each factory. For example 80% for my rocket production or 20% for my most basic "critical stuff" production, and the rest at 10% intervals in between. But I never reached a power drop that shut down anything more than the highest % factory.
- If the power drops below the % shut down that factory using a power switch, thus cutting all power to it. I also broadcast a global alarm (programmable speaker) telling me what was shut down and why.

The alarm is rigged to sound once and stop. My next version will have a timer to ring the alarm once a minute if the condition persists.

---

In case it is not obvious, this mechanism makes it so that it doesn't matter if I run low on power, as I will have time to correct it and only the least important factory gets shut down in the meantime.

[evopwr]

yup makes sense to resolve power shortages. But I did read unpowering parts of your factory will hurt UPS, according to Kovarex, so perhaps something to reconsider at some point.

[zOldBulldog]

yup makes sense to resolve power shortages. But I did read unpowering parts of your factory will hurt UPS, according to Kovarex, so perhaps something to reconsider at some point.

I think I saw that same post, but I would love to see more details before I give up on the technique, as it is very powerful and convenient. For example, if it only causes a UPS drop for the minute or five ever few days when it gets I unpowered,... then whoopty do, and I am not going to worry about it. On the other hand if it causes a big drop constantly, simply by having the possibility exist, then I would certainly have to do something about it.

[ColonelSandersLite]

I have never seen the amount of performance hit really quantified. AFAIK, the best way to find out would be do do some !!SCIENCE!! on it.

[mrvn]

Doesn't a power switch only cost power around the time you change it? Powering up or down beacons being the worst but I assume assembler, mining drills and inserters and so on too.

[JimBarracus]

Doesn't a power switch only cost power around the time you change it? Powering up or down beacons being the worst but I assume assembler, mining drills and inserters and so on too.

I think that unpowered entities eat ups because they constantly search for power.
Idling entities don't.

so for example if you want to shut down a miner field you should control the belts and let them fill up to let the miners idle
and not shut down power supply.

[zOldBulldog]

Doesn't a power switch only cost power around the time you change it? Powering up or down beacons being the worst but I assume assembler, mining drills and inserters and so on too.

I think that unpowered entities eat ups because they constantly search for power.
Idling entities don't.

so for example if you want to shut down a miner field you should control the belts and let them fill up to let the miners idle
and not shut down power supply.

If this is the case, then can anybody see any issue with shutting down power to the least important factory *only* while there is a brownout? That should typically be for about 1-5 minutes at the most. After that they go back to their normal powered state and the UPS drain goes away, right?

And now that I think of it... based on this logic, wouldn't shutting down power to *one* factory be better on UPS than letting the whole base be on brownout and *everything* be looking for power?

[mrvn]

Doesn't a power switch only cost power around the time you change it? Powering up or down beacons being the worst but I assume assembler, mining drills and inserters and so on too.

I think that unpowered entities eat ups because they constantly search for power.
Idling entities don't.

so for example if you want to shut down a miner field you should control the belts and let them fill up to let the miners idle
and not shut down power supply.

I think entities without full power constantly eat UPS. So to me it seems better to turn of 10% and have them search for power so that 90% will have full power and don't eat UPS. So in a brownout situation power switches seem like the better solution. Plus filling belts takes way to long there.

On the other hand if you want to stop a miner field because you don't need them just now. Then yes, using a backlog on the belts seems better. On the other hand that still leaves the power drain from idle entities. What about miners blocked by a full belt and without power?

[quyxkh]

Why not sound the alarm _before_ shutdown? Give yourself an extra 5% buffer before turning out the lights on poor innocent factories .

[mrvn]

Why not sound the alarm _before_ shutdown? Give yourself an extra 5% buffer before turning out the lights on poor innocent factories .

Because the brownout happens when you just placed down a big blueprint for a new solar farm (so all the recharging ports start eating power), it is night and the aliens attack (so a lot of laser turrets eat power too). That easily eats up an 500MW of power.

Otherwise I agree with you. It should never get that far in the first place.

[quyxkh]

For a data point, I have a map with a switchable ~4K-beacon drain, turning it off and on makes almost no difference in the game update, it costs little more to run when it's on and being powered by nukes+accumulators than off with the nukes charging the accumulators.

[J-H]

You can chain heat pipes through nuke plants? They don't have to hook directly to each one?

*mind blown*

This changes everything about how I lay out my plants.

[bobucles]

You can chain heat pipes through nuke plants?

Yep. Nuke plants have the same heat pipe mechanics as ordinary heat pipes. The difference is they can transfer much more heat much more quickly. Using empty reactors as super heat pipes will work.

[zOldBulldog]

We've derailed somewhat from the purpose of the thread.

Since Nuclear - as nice as it is - isn't low UPS for large bases, can I point us back in the direction of discussing "alternatives" that provide at least 400Mw per quickly placed blueprint and have a low UPS hit?

[quyxkh]

If an efficient nuc design isn't low-overhead enough to serve, and solar's too bulky, I think the only option left is

Code: Select all

/c game.player.insert'electric-energy-interface'

and sacrifice whatever resources you think appropriate to the gods in exchange.

[eradicator]

If an efficient nuc design isn't low-overhead enough to serve, and solar's too bulky, I think the only option left is

Code: Select all

/c game.player.insert'electric-energy-interface'

and sacrifice whatever resources you think appropriate to the gods in exchange.

Reminds me of minecraft TPPI where you could craft creative power/mana/whatever-sources for the "appropriate" cost. I happen to have made a mod that makes eei craftable, but there was never much interest.

Lovely 1.1G plant btw. Every time i tried something similar i ended up with insuffucient heat pipe capacity and had to double/triple them. Maybe my measurements were flawed.

[darkfrei]

Another one EEI mod is RITEG, but this entity has limited power for unlimited time. This mod was optimized for megabases, there will be updated only one entity/tick.