Multistage Steam Power Factory

[AshToDust]

Hello guyz,

For the beauty of it, I setup my first multistage steam factory as proof of concept for further improvements.
My use case would be: first stage reaching peak production (5MW), second stage going on, second stage reaching peak production (10MW), third stage going on… and so on.

Let see my prototype…



First, you can see my solid fuel production facility at the bottom.
It's quite simple, it's producing solid fuel from light oil and petroleum as priority with some tanks outside to work as buffer and as provider for other facilities.



Then, we got the stage per say…



First stage has nothing special but a lonely small pole at top right (3). That pole is connected only to the last steam engine of the stage. It’s my stage production probe and it’s part of my “stage probe grid”, the green circuit on my screenshot. That circuit is only connecting one fast inserter from the next stage to the last steam engine of the current stage.
It’s quite simple: if the current stage is overstress, the fast inserter of next stage will go slower. As that inserter is connected to only one steam engine which is connected to the full main grid, it will slow faster than if it was connected to the full grid.
Second stage is quite similar to the first one except for his solid fuel belt. First stage was directly connected to the solid fuel factory output belt. Second stage is not. Solid fuel can be transferred from the input belt of first stage to the input belt of second stage via 2 smarts inserters (2). We will come back to those inserter later…
Second stage has a small setup (1) measuring if first stage electric output is enough or not via the stage probe circuit of first stage. It’s a smart chest with 4 stone, the fast inserter from the probe circuit and a basic inserter connected to a failsafe electric circuit (a solar panel and a capacitor are enough to have enough power for endless inserter work). If the fast inserter is working full time, the smart chest will have 0 or 1 stone in it, never more as the fast inserter is working faster than the basic one. If the fast inserter is working slower than the basic inserter, it will mean the first stage is overstressed.



The thing is, my two smart inserters between first stage input belt and second stage input belt are connected to the smart chest with a condition stone > 1.
So, as soon as the fast inserter is slowing down, second stage will be powered by solid fuel coming from first stage.
Third stage is similar… and so on…

And it works as expected!!!

Schematics to show the power grids:


Still I have plan for improvement.
First, I must disconnect the smart inserters from main grid and connect them to a failsafe grid as they are currently working slower than expected when a stage is kicking on. I guess I will had a steam engine right outside my solid fuel buffer just to power the smart inserters (2) and the basics one (1) so I could get rid of the solar panel and capacitor as I dislike solar power it factorio 

So what do you thing? Other way to improve this?

Ash

[Gus_Smedstad]

I gather the point of all of this is to effectively reduce the priority of steam engines? So mostly they're off, but they gradually turn on when you aren't getting enough power from accumulators and solar panels?

There are a lot of solutions centered around turning on steam engines when accumulators run out, including very sensitive combinator versions that don't move items around. All of them tend to turn all your steam engines on at once. Which seems desirable, because the usual situation is that it's night, so solar is providing no power, and your accumulators are running low, and you need emergency power to last until sunrise. Turning on just some of your steam engines is usually a Bad Idea, because when the accumulators run out entirely, your base suffers a partial shutdown. Unless you have a big enough steam plant to power everything with no other power sources.

So what is the situation you're envisioning where turning on just some of your steam engines is a good idea, instead of either enabling all of them (if accumulator power is low) or disabling all of them (if you have plenty of accumulator power)?

[AshToDust]

No it's not that
I'm using solar energy only for my switch to try it.
I'm trying to play without solar energy. A full steam setup.

Technicly it's not useful as the game is already adjusting fuel and water usage to the needs. But it's doing it by balencing the output of every steam engine of the grid and balencing the boiler output to every "boiler line" (with low need you will have one or two boilers working for each setup).
My goal was just to change that balancing by adding a stage mechanic. I found it nice to work on fuel input rather than water input to avoid the long fuel buffer belt (point which is not fully resolved yet as the buffer of a stage is filling up as soon as the next stage is kicking on, which is great, but not emptying once it turns off. Should be easy to do it by using actual probe)

Game usage? Decentralized steam factory stages with kicking on priority based on coal/fuel access for each site. The more access a specific factory has, the higher his priority is. And you can change the priorities as access are changing.

[Gus_Smedstad]

Technicly it's not useful as the game is already adjusting fuel and water usage to the needs.

Right, so you already know it does nothing useful, while introducing unnecessary brownouts when the currently enabled stages get overwhelmed. You asked for suggestions on how to improve this - the obvious way is to remove all the extra steps and feed the boilers fuel without restrictions.

[Marconos]

Technicly it's not useful as the game is already adjusting fuel and water usage to the needs.

Right, so you already know it does nothing useful, while introducing unnecessary brownouts when the currently enabled stages get overwhelmed. You asked for suggestions on how to improve this - the obvious way is to remove all the extra steps and feed the boilers fuel without restrictions.

I'm with this guy. I don't see any benefit other than adding more lag inducing items that provide no benefit. I run a 100% coal powered map and peak between 1.3 - 1.4 GW on coal and don't see any reason on why this would be better.