Factorio Forums

When switching to solar cells one frequently runs into power problems at night. Obviously solar cells don't work well at night. So I wanted to use combinators to turn of power to power hungry or unecessary things at night. But solar cells don't emit a signal when they produce power.

So I was thinking there should be a clock combinator that can be set to emit signals at certain times of the day. With that you could also turn on some street lights from dark to midnight or similar fancy things.

Ssilk posted this suggestion and one of the things I requested on that was the ability to link or synchronise it with in-game time.

Couldn't you just achieve what you need by using an accumulator? When the solar panel output drops the accumulator will begin to discharge. Once it has done so to a certain point, cut the power to the largest loads to conserve the remaining power for other things.

Not if you want to ensure something like accumulators are fully charged when the solar panels start to power down.

I don't understand people worrying about power at night/switching to steam engines/turning off things.

Just spam the map with solar panels and accus - at any given time my accumulators store enough power to last two-three consecutive nights. Right now I have 40 GJ accumulators (and plenty of panels for charging).

Because you get tied up expanding oil then you find you need tons of coal for your plastic then green circuit production needs expanding and omg what happened to all my power??

Clock combinator is okay, but what other uses will it have?
If its only for this single thing, than should it be really implemented?

(You can use separate network with a few accus\radars\combinators to determine what power flow from battaries is now).
(Or even 1 constant + 1 decider + 1 solar panel if you want to know of complete darkness, didnt check, but i think that should work).

Clock would have several functions, output signal:

• every x ticks
• every x seconds
• at [time of day]
• ???

Deadly-Bagel wrote:Clock would have several functions, output signal:

• every x ticks
• every x seconds
• at [time of day]
• ???

This would be okay i guess.

Deadly-Bagel wrote:Ssilk posted this suggestion and one of the things I requested on that was the ability to link or synchronise it with in-game time.

I saw that post and I find it mostly pointless. You can build the clock/trigger described there with a few combinators and get pretty much the same effect. Didn't see the part about synching with in-game time.

afk2minute wrote:Clock combinator is okay, but what other uses will it have?
If its only for this single thing, than should it be really implemented?

(You can use separate network with a few accus\radars\combinators to determine what power flow from battaries is now).
(Or even 1 constant + 1 decider + 1 solar panel if you want to know of complete darkness, didnt check, but i think that should work).

Except that is what this post is about: You can't do it with a solar pannel. You can't connect the solar pannel to the decider. What signal do radars emit? How do I connect them to a combinator?

OdinYggd wrote:Couldn't you just achieve what you need by using an accumulator? When the solar panel output drops the accumulator will begin to discharge. Once it has done so to a certain point, cut the power to the largest loads to conserve the remaining power for other things.

Can't check in game right now but I thought I had tested connecting an accumulator to a red wire and it didn't work. Problem with that idea though is that the accumulator discharging is no sign of night. Happens when aliens attack and the laser turrets fire like crazy all the time.

Having the solar pannel emit a signal would avoid having a separate clock combinator that knows the time of day. From there you could start counting ticks when the solar pannel starts producing power to make a in-game clock that self synchronizes to daylight. And isn't that what factorio is all about? Building the real thing from the broken pieces left after you crashed?

So let me change my suggestion to:

Power generator (solar pannels / steam engine / accumulator) should output a power signal equaling the amount of power they can generate.

Make that 2 signals: One for how much they can generate and one for how much they do generate to meet demand. That way you can turn on your solar pannel factory when demand is > 90% of supply.

What he means is you have an isolated power grid, only a little one with say six solar panels, an accumulator, and a radar. The radar creates a constant power drain which is handled by the solar panels during the day which also charge the accumulator. Once night falls, solar panels stop working and the radar drains the accumulator. Put a condition in that once the accumulator hits 0% it triggers an event. You can tweak exactly when it triggers this by modifying the number of accumulators and radars, or you could activate a timer once the accumulator runs out.

This solution does work, but it's bulky, fiddly and messy. Accidentally link it to your power grid and it's useless.

No reason to be so negative.

There's a clock combinator in this mod: https://mods.factorio.com/mods/binbinhfr/TimeTools

mrvn wrote:Except that is what this post is about: You can't do it with a solar pannel. You can't connect the solar pannel to the decider. What signal do radars emit? How do I connect them to a combinator?

Radar is only there to drain power, connect to the accumulator instead. Put it on an isolated power grid so it doesn't care if you have lasers firing or anything because that's not affecting this grid.

mrvn wrote:Having the solar pannel emit a signal would avoid having a separate clock combinator that knows the time of day. From there you could start counting ticks when the solar pannel starts producing power to make a in-game clock that self synchronizes to daylight. And isn't that what factorio is all about? Building the real thing from the broken pieces left after you crashed?

Let me get this straight, this is a guy who can turns rocks from the ground into a rocket to launch into space but can't build a clock? Yes it is possible to build a circuit to monitor an accumulator and ping at a time of day but you're looking at maybe 70 tiles to do so.

Deadly-Bagel wrote:What he means is you have an isolated power grid, only a little one with say six solar panels, an accumulator, and a radar. The radar creates a constant power drain which is handled by the solar panels during the day which also charge the accumulator. Once night falls, solar panels stop working and the radar drains the accumulator. Put a condition in that once the accumulator hits 0% it triggers an event. You can tweak exactly when it triggers this by modifying the number of accumulators and radars, or you could activate a timer once the accumulator runs out.

This solution does work, but it's bulky, fiddly and messy. Accidentally link it to your power grid and it's useless.

It almost what i meant, i meant using signal delayer (if you dont want to get some loop, or whatever harder than basics (i like to go the simpliest way, without fancy loops if it can be avoided), just place like 10 (i actually dont know how much u will need, depends on how fast accu drains from a radar) combinators and connect them to each other that will delay signal enough) and comparing the delayed signal of accumulator charge to non-delayed signal of accumulator charge. When delayed is more than non-delayed signal that means its discharging, when its less than its charging. You can regulate it easy with number of solar panel (at which time of dusk\dawn it will trigger). But yeah, you get the idea, its quite bulky but hey, it will work, easy to setup and easy to regulate.
Setting to trigger at some point of accu charge has some more delay and that way its better.


But clock seems like a decent idea anyway.
Another great (IMO) idea would be ability of the substation to select Mode of operation: pwr and it will give you satisfaction\consumption\etc levels in % (or in MW).
That will solve OPs problem more efficient than some clock thing.

I think the clock combinator is going to be implemented in 0.15
Also you can build clock with like 2 combinators anyway. You also could read out the power charge of acc and trigger you power off on 99% charge and then turn off your facility for 2000 ticks or so. I think the night is 2500 ticks long so that should be fair enougth.

if there is need to turn off power for power hungry objects at night why not use single solar cell, small pole and constant combinator near it? As long as combinator not in range of other poles connected to power structure or connected to power network, you have day/night sensor.

aeros1 wrote:if there is need to turn off power for power hungry objects at night why not use single solar cell, small pole and constant combinator near it? As long as combinator not in range of other poles connected to power structure or connected to power network, you have day/night sensor.

As said multiple times now in the thread: Because solar cells don't give off any signal.

You need an accumulator in the circuit, also mentioned multiple times. I tried that yesterday and a full accumulator gives out a signal of 100 A.

So minimal setup would be:

- 1 solar cell
- 1 accumulator
- 1 power consumer
- 1 power pole

I haven't figured out what is a good choice for power consumer here. You need something that allows the accumulator to charge so a radar is out. That would require more solar cells. But you want something that draws enough power for the accumulator to loose charge at night. If it stays at 100% all night that is no good. My though is that you want something drawing around 30kW so charge and discharge rates at the accumulator are equal. But you could have less and watch for the accumulator being full in the morning or (significantly) more and watch for the accumulator being empty at night.

Maybe the idea consumer would be when the accumulator gets charged to 100% at the point where the solar cell still provides just enough power for the consumer in the evening and then falls slowly to 0% at the point where the solar cell has just enough power for the consumer in the morning again. The output signal would then look like this: /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\. No flat areas. Anyone up for computing the exact power consumption for this and see what's the closest match to that?

But solar panels give out power and combinators need power to work. No power, no signal.