Increase Accumulator Maximum Output Rate

[AntiElitz]

I had another situation where I used a lot of bots and spiked my power shortly. First i tried accumulators, but their output rate was again too slow. Instead it was much better to just increase the amount of turbines to also cover the biggest peaks.

[fpx007]

Since the game has already introduced the objects known as supercapacitors, why don't we utilize them as ingredient for possible accumulator mk.2's?

Capacitors are known for fast charge/discharge rate, so it is reasonable to dramatically increase their charge/discharge rate, especially the latter. Thus, they can be quite useful during huge power spikes,e.g. when laser towers are firing and/or rocket silos launching rockets.

(Actually, I believe it is fair that the ultimate accumulators can discharge as fast as possible, though an upper limit is still required for charging rate to balance it.)

[radical_larry]

Steam turbines/engines and steam tank storage are way too good anyways, but I doubt the devs would do any big changes at this point. If steam turbines wouldn't be able to load follow the grid perfectly, and instead required some time to spool up and down, accumulators wouldn't feel so underwhelming. They'd be able to fill their own role in the power grid.

[FasterJump]

Even before Space Age, I had to build tons of accumulators to handle nuclear / grid demand. The ratio transmission / capacity has always been a bit low.

Especially given that 1 turbine = 20 accu (power transmission), and given that nights on most planets are shorter than days, I think that doubling the power output would be a good idea. (for simplicity sake, could double the power input as well)

[FasterJump]

Counterpoints:
In real life, power demand is regulated by power generators (turbines, etc.), not by accumulators. Also, buffing accumulators too much may create an imbalance between solar panels and accumulator ratio, in common setups.

A good middle ground could be: keeping the capacity and Max input the same, but only doubling Max output.

[macdjord]

+1

The fact that accumulators are worse for handling spikes in demand than just building extra steam engines with tanked steam has always bothered me.

[P.E.T.A.R.]

A little buff for accumulators is in order to make them more viable for other use-cases.

[worph]

I am in favor of a mk2 building that uses supercapacitors and has it's own research, especially for late-game Fulgora.

[Erfar]

I would +1 this because in my opinion accumulators should be better at charge/discharge than steam.

Accumulators should be good pair to Lasers and Roboports as both have very high spikes. But right not if you going for lasers/mass roboports you better by just making more steam for them and keeping accumulators only for needs of solar powering base at night,

[Fletch]

I'm the whacky guy from the Steam forums with the Blackout Proof Solar proof of concept idea that was mentioned earlier. Please don't let my one-off science experiment influence this discussion though.

My primary use case for accumulators is to pair them with solar panels to power the entirety of Nauvis' base throughout the day & night (including all the roboports and laser turrets), and its the boilers that are relegated (off) to be the emergency backup power. As with most things in Factorio: if it isn't enough, then just build more. My typical Nauvis base has well over a thousand solar panels and accumulators -- one does not just build a handful of these things -- so an individual accumulator's charge/discharge rate is irrelevant at that scale.

A vanilla (normal quality) accumulator holds 5MJ energy with 300kW charge/discharge rate -- it takes 17 seconds to fully charge (or to fully discharge). The question: is that amount of time too long (or too short)? I can see the point where others mentioned quality -- a legendary accumulator holds 30MJ with 750kW charge/discharge rate -- so that accumulator takes 40 seconds to fully charge/discharge. Is its amount of time too long (or too short)? It holds 6x more energy density, but only charges 2.5x as fast...

Fulgora lightning collectors have a constant huge 150 MW drain, so you'll need many hundreds of accumulators to not waste any of the lightning's energy into the ground.

• 500 normal accumulators to absorb at that max rate. 500 normal accumulators has 2500 MJ of storage capacity.
• 200 legendary accumulators to absorb at that max rate. 200 legendary accumulators has 6000 MJ of storage capacity.

I don't feel like this is unbalanced, but then again I'm used to the status quo, and I'm already used to having fields of accumulators

[hittsy]

The issue is that accumulators are too simple; they require too little interaction compared to other methods of buffering or making energy. Tanked steam at least requires you to manage it, and since we don't have an electric boiler, you have to manage a burner (or nuclear) supply chain.

Even on fulgora, iirc the numbers are set up that a single lightning rod or collector won't hold the charge long enough for all of the accumulators inside it's protection range (if you filled it to the limit) to fully capture the strike's power.