Hi everyone,
I’m currently running a late-game base with around 5k SPM production, and I’ve been hitting constant power shortages. My setup includes a mix of nuclear plants and solar fields with accumulator backups. The issue is that demand spikes at certain times (especially when all assemblers and smelters kick in), and my accumulators drain much faster than expected.
I’ve tried adding more nuclear reactors and increasing solar coverage, but the problem seems to be about timing rather than total capacity. I suspect there might be an inefficiency in how my power network is structured, but I can’t pinpoint it.
Has anyone found a good way to smooth out these fluctuations without massively overbuilding power production?
Any tips on using combinators or circuit logic to dynamically control consumption would also be appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
Trouble Balancing Power Production and Consumption in Late Game
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Anne Hathaway
- Manual Inserter
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Sat Aug 09, 2025 2:37 am
Re: Trouble Balancing Power Production and Consumption in Late Game
You seem to talk about Nauvis, not of the other planets. So your main energy source is nuclear power.
What you describe is either insufficient power production in general or a flaw in your nuclear power plant design preventing full power output after some time with full load. Perhaps water supply or steam buffering. Post a save of your map for us to inspect, if you like.
I wouldn't call it "overbuilding", but yes, I build as many nuclear power plants as required to satisfy the whole base during peak power demand. The dynamic demand of a bigger base is huge, so building any accumulator fields for buffering is much more effort than just build more nuclear power plants. I solely rely on nuclear power. I do have a few tiny solar panel and accumulator fields, but they're a leftover from earlier game stages without nuclear power. They wouldn't last for 5 seconds if nuclear power fails. I keep them to help restart nuclear power in case the power cell supply fails, or the water supply, which didn't happen yet.
My solution to the power production challenge is this. I prepared a blueprint of a tileable nuclear power plant. It's 2x6 reactors and every tile is able to produce 1.76 GW. Whenever the base hits the power production limit, I just add another tile on top of the existing plant. Another 1.76 GW. Since water supply is not an issue any more with Factorio 2, you just need to find some large space outside of your base enough for 3-10 blueprint tiles and a lake for water supply nearby to start.
Switching off parts of the factory to avoid peak power consumption is not a good solution. It's killing performance (UPS) for the game, and it's an ugly workaround for the core issue: insufficient power supply. You might do that while you're limited, for example while you still just had steam power, but not in late game where you're able to build everything.
This is the power plant of my current map, 2 tiles of the blueprint, current max output 3.68 GW with these 2 tiles:
Tileable blueprint 2x6 reactors. Put next tile on top matching the reactor line, use force building to cut off the stuff below the reactor line with the testing and control items, which are not needed for additional tiles. Add enough offshore pumps (2 per tile), but a single pipe is sufficient. Wasteless design with 1 combinator, where "wasteless" begins at about 20% load up to 100%. Below 20% some fuel is probably wasted.
What you describe is either insufficient power production in general or a flaw in your nuclear power plant design preventing full power output after some time with full load. Perhaps water supply or steam buffering. Post a save of your map for us to inspect, if you like.
I wouldn't call it "overbuilding", but yes, I build as many nuclear power plants as required to satisfy the whole base during peak power demand. The dynamic demand of a bigger base is huge, so building any accumulator fields for buffering is much more effort than just build more nuclear power plants. I solely rely on nuclear power. I do have a few tiny solar panel and accumulator fields, but they're a leftover from earlier game stages without nuclear power. They wouldn't last for 5 seconds if nuclear power fails. I keep them to help restart nuclear power in case the power cell supply fails, or the water supply, which didn't happen yet.
My solution to the power production challenge is this. I prepared a blueprint of a tileable nuclear power plant. It's 2x6 reactors and every tile is able to produce 1.76 GW. Whenever the base hits the power production limit, I just add another tile on top of the existing plant. Another 1.76 GW. Since water supply is not an issue any more with Factorio 2, you just need to find some large space outside of your base enough for 3-10 blueprint tiles and a lake for water supply nearby to start.
Switching off parts of the factory to avoid peak power consumption is not a good solution. It's killing performance (UPS) for the game, and it's an ugly workaround for the core issue: insufficient power supply. You might do that while you're limited, for example while you still just had steam power, but not in late game where you're able to build everything.
This is the power plant of my current map, 2 tiles of the blueprint, current max output 3.68 GW with these 2 tiles:
- Screenshot 2025-08-01 142725.jpg (2.72 MiB) Viewed 147 times
Tileable blueprint 2x6 reactors. Put next tile on top matching the reactor line, use force building to cut off the stuff below the reactor line with the testing and control items, which are not needed for additional tiles. Add enough offshore pumps (2 per tile), but a single pipe is sufficient. Wasteless design with 1 combinator, where "wasteless" begins at about 20% load up to 100%. Below 20% some fuel is probably wasted.
Re: Trouble Balancing Power Production and Consumption in Late Game
So long story short your factory is far away from 100% uptime AND you don't control when machinery works.Anne Hathaway wrote: Sat Aug 09, 2025 2:44 am The issue is that demand spikes at certain times (especially when all assemblers and smelters kick in), and my accumulators drain much faster than expected.
This game has no feature implementation for such things as power grid structure. No matter how much power you need to transfer and how far, all you need is single copper wire. Factorio's power grids has zero latencies for power transfer and has zero impedance. So that's just direct comparison of power production against power consumption of connected entities.Anne Hathaway wrote: Sat Aug 09, 2025 2:44 am I’ve tried adding more nuclear reactors and increasing solar coverage, but the problem seems to be about timing rather than total capacity. I suspect there might be an inefficiency in how my power network is structured, but I can’t pinpoint it.
The only thing you may mess with structure is to disconnect power providers from power consumers dynamically when you don't mean that.
General advice would be to design your factory to have 100% uptime. Or at least as close to 100% as you can. That's what all perfect-ratio-talk is about.Anne Hathaway wrote: Sat Aug 09, 2025 2:44 am Has anyone found a good way to smooth out these fluctuations without massively overbuilding power production?
Another general advice is always to have backup steam generation using burnable fuel (just google "factorio backup steam"). Place programmable speaker next to power switch and configure speaker to ring an alarm if your grid using backup power.
And you may post your electric power info graphs here. I suggest to use 1h graphs for the beginning.
Re: Trouble Balancing Power Production and Consumption in Late Game
As an alternative to building enough nuclear to power your entire factory, it is possible to set your labs to "sleep" overnight, thus not requiring the rest of your factory to work when your solar panels are sleeping. Given a small solar panel/accumulator set up on its own power network to detect sundown (when the accumulator starts providing power), and sun up (when the accumulator starts recharging), set an SR latch to output a daytime/night time indicator. Wire to the inserters feeding the labs, and disable them at night. You could also do something similar for specific parts of the factory like the smelting columns if needed.
My own personal Factorio super-power - running out of power.
