Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Add momentum to Turbines

What ?

Add momentum to Turbines so that they need to Ramp up/Down to fit the power consumption rather than immediately spiking to meet demand. Higher momentum for bigger turbines, lower for smaller ones, none for batteries and solar panels

Why ?

I know Factorio is not a sim game, but I think it would add a nice dynamic to the power grid, batteries will then work like they do in real life, filtering demand, handling the excess in production as well as the shortcoming thereof. So you would have to think a bit more when building power stations.
this would be fun for me at least

In real life, the vast majority of electrical generators are constant-RPM. That's where the power frequency comes from. Until very recently, there were no batteries connected to the electric grid. Even now they're pretty much a rounding error. Very brief spikes are handled by the rotational inertia of the turbines and generators. Over longer timescales, there are control systems that act to keep the turbines at constant RPM.

More demand = more torque (or more turbines running), not more RPM.

Good point, I didn't really think about that.

I looked at my power network and saw that the steam turbines speeding up when the demand increased, which led to my post.

So would you agree with the current implementation of power generation as it is now? My nuclear plant quickly makes up for the demand when the critters attack and the lazers start firing