Factorio Forums

A more generalized chart showing only the total power consumption (ignoring accumulators), total power production (ignoring accumulators), and current accumulator charge would be very useful for analysing the state of power generation and storage over the long term. It would help with planning out future upgrades to your power system, as well as working out when you would need to do said upgrades.

Currently it's only possible to view accumulator charge and max potential power production at any given instant, accumulators mess with the displayed production/consumption values, and there's no easy way to look at the total production/consumption values unless you're able to mentally add 17 line graphs in real-time.

I'm pretty sure this was suggested somewhere before. But yes, I totally agree. A chart for accumulator charge and production/consumption would be logical and useful

Maybe you'd want to give a look at this topic : viewtopic.php?f=80&t=19987.
Search button can be of some help too

I think the current UI for seeing power usage is unintuitive.

I know how to use it but there is a definite learning curve.
I've watched several blind let's plays, it's very common for people to not notice that their power is low.
Also they often check the boiler for power usage see it as green and think everything is OK.
For experienced players it might be hard to realize that it's a problem since they have learned how to do it.

I suggest that the boiler show a bar for total power supplied/required so new players can more easily see that they are low on power.
An alert for low power might also be useful, preferably something you can turn off in the options menu.

There might be better solutions, I mostly want to lift that this is a usability issue.

Merged both topics because I feel they are about the same thing : the current UI for power usage is counter intuitive. This comes back very often, and I advise to have a look at the topic I have linked just above in the older thread. It's full of suggestions.