Factorio Forums

The short question is this: How can I get signals in the circuit network that reads various stats, like what you see when opening the power grid graphs? You would think such things could be read by linking a green or red wire to a power pole or substation, but that doesn't work.

As examples, here are some useful values I'd love to be able to get:
- Total Current Power Consumption.
- Total Current Maximum Consumption.
- Total Current Production.
- Total Current Maximum Production (Capacity).

The graphs give you these values in detail, to read and manage things manually, but how can I get them into the circuit network?
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Why do I want this?

As I progress through the game, obtaining better and better methods, and more and more efficient methods, for generating power, I often don't tear down the old power systems, leaving them running as backups/fallbacks.

This creates an issue though. All running systems tend to divide the load proportionally. No one system gets prioritized as the primary power source. This means for example that the coal power will still keep burning coal (and wasting it), even when other better systems don't need the help. It won't burn nearly as much with the load divided out to other systems, but it will still be doing some.

I don't want that. I want the newer, more efficient systems to handle EVERYTHING when they are enough, only passing work off to the old systems if power usage spikes to levels that they can't handle by themselves, or if they suffer some malfunction or bottleneck that chokes off their ability to satisfy demand.

I'm currently wanting to do this in Krastorio, now that I've researched fusion power. I'm leaving the old fission reactors up, but I want the inserters to completely stop feeding them fuel unless grid satisfaction is egregiously not met for some reason by the new fusion plants.

The obvious idea is to read current satisfaction/production/consumption/etc. from the grid, and use those values to turn the inserters on or off under certain conditions, but I can't find a way to read those values. There SHOULD be a way. It would be so dumb if there wasn't. So why is it nowhere to be found? Or am I just missing it?
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Another reason to want this:

Prioritizing power to certain parts of the grid/factory. That kind of says it all, but here is a bit more detail anyway.

There is a circuit network piece, the power switch, that allows you to connect or break electrical lines. It can be controlled by the network. The obvious use for this is to have the network throw the switch (like a breaker) to cut off less needed parts of the factory if/when there isn't enough power to run everything at a reasonable pace. I might even go so far as to say that this is the ONLY major use for this piece.

But if you can't read grid power values, that one most obvious use for it is impossible, save as a manual feature. So what is even the point of this piece existing as a network controllable item?

Need those values. How do I get them?

If you want the exact figures you need to use a mod.

Relative production rates can be calculated for a group of Generators based upon the amount of Fluid (Water/Steam or Fluoroketone) being used by the system. Measuring fluid through a pump accurately is tricky - you need to use a tick-based activation mechanism to kee a Tank at a known level. It is easier with Space Age Fusion Reactors because the Cryogenic Plant has a “Read Finished” signal that can be counted.

Learning how to use the Circuit Network (accurately) to create such mechanisms is one of the later gameplay challenges. Power switches are useful for de/activating machines to control production, such as the Beacon not providing module effects while unpowered is useful to “toggle” the effects of Quality modules. Or only connecting laser turrets to the grid when Bullets are being used / the biters are attacking. It is a tool in your box; not a wholly-premade solution.

In my experience the higher tiers of power generation are so many orders of magnitude stronger that connecting lower tiers on demand will not do much to prevent brownouts.

But if you want to do it, the only vanilla way is to read battery charge level, if it is getting depleted then you connect more generators.

There is no means to read such statistical data into the simulation, and it's not possible in general to directly read power consumption of some factory part.

What you can do is adding a bunch of accumulators and check the charge. Whenever it is below 100, all connected power plants are at full load and there is demand for more energy.


Or you can build a tiny steam power plant (1 boiler, 2 steam engines) for measuring steam consumption. If you know the utilization of this little steam power plant, you know the utilization of the whole power production. For example, 2 engines consume 60/s at full load and 0/s with no load, so your overall power consumption is at (consumption * 100 / 60) percent.

Example:
This little contraption checks the steam level in a storage tank and activates the pump for 1 tick, if it gets under 1000 units. This pulse will transfer exactly 20 steam into the tank and bring it over 1000 again. Then it counts the ticks until the level is again under 1000. Now you know you consumed 20 steam in this amount of ticks. At 100% we consume 60/s, and 60/s is 1/tick. So the usage of this plant is (20 units per pulse * 100) / ticks per pulse = 2000 / ticks %.
The granularity is 5%, since we add and consume 20 units per cycle. If you need higher granularity, you can add more boilers+steam engines, but that's not really necessary imo.

The gauge gets a utilization signal from 0..100. Copy blueprint

I see. Well that's all... disappointing.

I find myself thinking that Satisfactory handles this issue way better, what with their priority breaker switches and such. Despite not even having anything comparable to the circuit network in their game.

Oh well. Thanks for answering my question, and for the suggestions, everyone.

Rancara wrote: Sun Jan 25, 2026 2:53 pm I don't want that. I want the newer, more efficient systems to handle EVERYTHING when they are enough, only passing work off to the old systems if power usage spikes to levels that they can't handle by themselves, or if they suffer some malfunction or bottleneck that chokes off their ability to satisfy demand.

I'm currently wanting to do this in Krastorio, now that I've researched fusion power. I'm leaving the old fission reactors up, but I want the inserters to completely stop feeding them fuel unless grid satisfaction is egregiously not met for some reason by the new fusion plants.

The obvious idea is to read current satisfaction/production/consumption/etc. from the grid, and use those values to turn the inserters on or off under certain conditions, but I can't find a way to read those values. There SHOULD be a way. It would be so dumb if there wasn't. So why is it nowhere to be found? Or am I just missing it?

Sound fairly easy to do just use a single accumulator and if its charge level ever goes under 100% that means your new fusion plants is not enough and you need to also use the old fission reactor.

Rancara wrote: Sun Jan 25, 2026 8:18 pm I find myself thinking that Satisfactory handles this issue way better, what with their priority breaker switches and such.

I don't see any issue in the first place. The factory grows, and so does power consumption. Any obsoleted power plant isn't enough as safeguard against brownouts. If you start with a new power plant probably twice to five times the power than the last, and the new plant gets to its limit, any emergency power from the old plant is a drop in the ocean.

If you want to be safe against failure of your existing power plant, add programmable speakers to monitor fuel availability. It's able to send an alert. Add one accumulator to detect 100% power usage and connect with a programmable speaker. Plan to add a new power plant when the existing one gets over 60-60% utilization. A tileable or extendable power plant setup helps - just placing another blueprint next to the existing and that's it.

eugenekay wrote: Sun Jan 25, 2026 3:38 pm If you want the exact figures you need to use a mod.

mmmPI wrote: Mon Jan 26, 2026 5:50 am Sound fairly easy to do just use a single accumulator and if its charge level ever goes under 100% that means your new fusion plants is not enough and you need to also use the old fission reactor.

jdrexler75 wrote: Sun Jan 25, 2026 3:43 pm But if you want to do it, the only vanilla way is to read battery charge level, if it is getting depleted then you connect more generators.

Reading an accumulator is the best suggestion in this thread so far, in my opinion. I thought of this trick myself during my first playthrough a long time ago, and i can't believe I forgot about it. Brain fart moment, I guess.

Also thanks for the mod link, eugenekay. That's also a great suggestion. Kudos to the modders who thought to make that one.

jdrexler75 wrote: Sun Jan 25, 2026 3:43 pm In my experience the higher tiers of power generation are so many orders of magnitude stronger that connecting lower tiers on demand will not do much to prevent brownouts.

Tertius wrote: Mon Jan 26, 2026 8:15 am I don't see any issue in the first place. The factory grows, and so does power consumption. Any obsoleted power plant isn't enough as safeguard against brownouts. If you start with a new power plant probably twice to five times the power than the last, and the new plant gets to its limit, any emergency power from the old plant is a drop in the ocean.

If you want to be safe against failure of your existing power plant, add programmable speakers to monitor fuel availability. It's able to send an alert. Add one accumulator to detect 100% power usage and connect with a programmable speaker. Plan to add a new power plant when the existing one gets over 60-60% utilization. A tileable or extendable power plant setup helps - just placing another blueprint next to the existing and that's it.

To everyone saying this, you're not getting it. Backup power isn't there to prevent brownouts (although it can do that sometimes, believe it or not). It's there to prevent BLACKouts.

It's not there to power your whole factory as if nothing is happening for you to address. It's there to keep critical systems running (like base defenses, or systems needed for getting the main system running properly again) while you fix stuff.

Fixing stuff can be be way harder in automation games if you have absolutely zilch emergency power to do it with, because you lacked foresight and tore down all the old crap, so you had NOTHING but the new, shiny, high-end systems that require complex and failure-prone industry and production chains to run.

Hence the usefulness--the NEED even--to read grid power to detect those brownouts to shut off the power to non-critical systems and/or re-engage old power when something breaks.

Setting up programmable speakers to blare an alert is also a good idea though. Thanks for that one.

---------------------EDIT:

As an aside...

Tertius wrote: Sun Jan 25, 2026 6:03 pm Example:
This little contraption checks the steam level in a storage tank and activates the pump for 1 tick, if it gets under 1000 units. This pulse will transfer exactly 20 steam into the tank and bring it over 1000 again. Then it counts the ticks until the level is again under 1000. Now you know you consumed 20 steam in this amount of ticks. At 100% we consume 60/s, and 60/s is 1/tick. So the usage of this plant is (20 units per pulse * 100) / ticks per pulse = 2000 / ticks %.
The granularity is 5%, since we add and consume 20 units per cycle. If you need higher granularity, you can add more boilers+steam engines, but that's not really necessary imo.

The gauge gets a utilization signal from 0..100.
01-25-2026, 19-14-07.png

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Copy blueprint

Not sure a machine like that is ideal, or a likable solution. It feels very kludge. Especially as the main requirement of backup systems and their triggers is that they should be simple, and reliable due to their simplicity. But it's very interesting and cool, nonetheless. Thanks for posting that.

Rancara wrote: Mon Jan 26, 2026 10:16 am To everyone saying this, you're not getting it. Backup power isn't there to prevent brownouts (although it can do that sometimes, believe it or not). It's there to prevent BLACKouts.

It's not there to power your whole factory as if nothing is happening for you to address. It's there to keep critical systems running (like base defenses, or systems needed for getting the main system running properly again) while you fix stuff.

Having suffered from brownouts spiraling down to a blackout and completely frozen Aquilo bases, I take special care for all of my power plants with established bases on all planets. I don't keep old power plants around and hope it will suffice, I explicitly design all of my bases with monitoring and with a cold start. If it comes to Aquilo, take this literally. It's all designed for minimal manual intervention (will always require some, since you cannot foresee and test everything).

Everywhere, first you need power for fuel production for main power production, then run the main power production.
The resource needed for restarting power for fuel production must always be kept with a minimum stock.

Vulcanus: Power plant with acid neutralization. The acid neutralization plants have an additional separate power grid connected to some solar panels + accumulators to keep them active at all times. There is a full acid storage tank nearby, so if the pumpjacks have no power, there is a small amount of acid available. If this is empty, I disconnect the plant power supply from the power supply for the mines, which include the sulfuric acid wells. The solar panels are enough to eventually achieve one or two pumpjack cycles, which is usually enough acid to start everything.
Alert: programmable speaker monitors steam level in steam buffer storage tanks. This power plant is very susceptible to spiraling down during a brownout, immediate action is required if the steam level drops below threshold, so this threshold can be used for a power switch that disconnects everything non-essential.

Nauvis: Nuclear power plant with no pumps (water offshore pumps don't need power). The power plant runs on its own separate power grid powered by solar panets + accumulators, and it has its own separate logistic network (bot network). It cannot fail except due to fuel shortage, so there is a stock of fuel cells.
Alert: programmable speaker monitors fuel cell stock (< 500), uranium ore availability, u-238, u-235 stock.

Gleba: Power plant with heating towers, fueled by rocket fuel and spoilage and leftover jelly/yumako mash. The bioflux production line can be cold started by a dedicated "nutrients from spoilage" assembling machine. This machine has a dedicated power grid powered by solar panets + accumulators.
Alert: programmable speaker monitors rocket fuel stock (< 1500) and heating tower temperature (< 600). Also susceptible to brownout spiral.

Fulgora: Power plant with lightning collectors + accumulators cannot fail. There are no movable parts.
Alert: no alert.

Aquilo: Fusion power plant. Cannot fail except if fuel shortage. Heating with heating towers, powered by rocket fuel.
Alert: programmable speaker monitors rocket fuel stock (< 1500) and fusion power cell stock (< 500). I guess I should also add a temperature alert now the whole base heated up to 700-1000°C.
Restarting a frozen base with no rocket fuel available and no cold fluoroketone in the fusion reactor:
1. remove the heat pipe near the fusion power planet so any heat is first unfreezing the cryogenic planet that's converting hot fluoroketone to cold for the reactor. To operate this plant, there is a separate power grid powered by solar panels (just need 1 craft cycle that will eventually happen).
2. bring in rocket fuel with some platform and fuel the heating tower near the fusion power plant, so the fusion power plant melts.
3. after the cryogenic plant produced 1x cold fluoroketone, disconnect solar power from it and instead power 1 fusion reactor. Insert a fuel cell. It will load its energy buffer and once it has enough it will "craft" one plasma cycle which is enough for a few MW to get everything up and running and stay running.
4. we have now power from the fusion power plant, but everything else is still frozen.
5. remove the heat pipes around the cryogenic plants required for ammoniacal solution separation, solid fuel from ammonia and ammonia rocket fuel so any heat will not dissipate. Fuel the heating tower near these buildings until they are unfrozen. Rocket fuel production will start and you don't need to supply it by platform.
6. make it so some roboport will melt soon, so heating tower supply is automated
7. wait until everything is unfrozen, and rebuild the removed heat pipe pieces.

I never felt the need for reading any power statistics, because monitoring a power plant for its specific fuel and circumstances is more direct and will directly tell what is wrong. If you just monitor for power usage, you still have to research what's the issue.

The most design has been done for Gleba. This has been done with cold starting in mind. Every other planet has just small additions to the existing stuff.

The most crucial alert on my save is no power planet monitoring, it's the bioflux supply monitoring for the captive biter nests on Nauvis.

I feel a lot of this is backward, if you want to "see the power usage" to manually handle the load balance you're doing it "wrong", you don't 'need' the vizualization per say, you can make it because you have access to lamps and several way to detect it if you want to make a fancy display, but this just goes to illustrate that you can automate it, which is the main goal it seems.

Now is a vizualizer ideal or desirable ? maybe not, but it's exactly what was asked for ... maybe for the wrong reasons x)

If what you want is to avoid blackout , then none of what was discussed is the ultimate solution, you should have started by this really cuz a vizualizer , if smart should deactivate itself to preserve the little power you have when it's critical, if what you need help for is to avoid black out , you can always use solar pannel and throttled accumulator to make sure they can't discharge too early, but it's also possible to make factories that can handle restarting from black-outs without trouble.

Eventually there is no magic solution, if you don't have enough energy production for your defense, no priority logic can save your base, the defense will be overun

mmmPI wrote: Mon Jan 26, 2026 4:20 pm I feel a lot of this is backward, if you want to "see the power usage" to manually handle the load balance you're doing it "wrong", you don't 'need' the vizualization per say, you can make it because you have access to lamps and several way to detect it if you want to make a fancy display, but this just goes to illustrate that you can automate it, which is the main goal it seems.

Now is a vizualizer ideal or desirable ? maybe not, but it's exactly what was asked for ... maybe for the wrong reasons x)

If what you want is to avoid blackout , then none of what was discussed is the ultimate solution, you should have started by this really cuz a vizualizer , if smart should deactivate itself to preserve the little power you have when it's critical, if what you need help for is to avoid black out , you can always use solar pannel and throttled accumulator to make sure they can't discharge too early, but it's also possible to make factories that can handle restarting from black-outs without trouble.

Eventually there is no magic solution, if you don't have enough energy production for your defense, no priority logic can save your base, the defense will be overun

You know what the most annoying thing is on game-help forums?

People who don't help answer the question of "How do I do [x thing]?".

Instead, they ask in return, "Why on earth would you need/want to do that?"

Then when you answer them, because maybe they needed that info to customize their way to do [x thing] for your situation, when you give them your reasons, they still don't help. They don't tell you how to do [x thing]. Instead they reply, "You don't need to do [x thing]. You're playing wrong. Play MY way instead."

Never mind that that's what you want to do. Never mind that you have your reasons for liking it that way. They still don't help answer the question. Instead, they try to play the game for you. Their way.
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Also no. I never said anything about wanting to "see power usage" manually, or create a display. How on earth did you get the idea that this thread was about anything even remotely related to that?

Quite the opposite. I asked about reading power usage into the circuit network. You know, the network for doing things automatically? Without needing to see and read them manually? That's the whole point of this thread. You can't have your automated system respond automatically to power levels and usage if you don't have a way for it to get that info.
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Also no. This response...

mmmPI wrote: Mon Jan 26, 2026 4:20 pm Eventually there is no magic solution, if you don't have enough energy production for your defense, no priority logic can save your base, the defense will be overun

...is just flat out wrong. How are you even thinking that? (Don't answer that. It's rhetorical.)

I mean, sure, if you don't have enough TOTAL power for your defenses, then they will be overrun. Priority power switches won't save you.

But if your defense isn't getting power, yet you have power elsewhere to divert? Like, say, from your old fission reactors in Krastorio? Or from your big mass of assembler 3's, stuffed with tier 3 production modules, all trying to waste your currently limited power on a big-ass utility tech cards production chain? Then priority logic most certainly can save your base.

As opposed to the default base behavior of brute forcing everything. All at once. All the time. All power always divided evenly. That's a dumb system. Not a smart one. I like designing smart systems. They are much more fun and rewarding to see them running as intended. Especially when you get to see them smartly handle the situations they were designed to.

Priority logic is a most wonderful thing. Just about any system, in any environment, uses it (or should be using it) when working on below-budget limited resources.

Stop trying to call it worthless. That's just stupid. This is basic.

Rancara wrote: Mon Jan 26, 2026 9:29 pm

mmmPI wrote: Mon Jan 26, 2026 4:20 pm Eventually there is no magic solution, if you don't have enough energy production for your defense, no priority logic can save your base, the defense will be overun

...is just flat out wrong. How are you even thinking that? (Don't answer that. It's rhetorical.)

I mean, sure, if you don't have enough TOTAL power for your defenses, then they will be overrun. Priority power switches won't save you.

That's exactly what i meant, to make sure you didn't missed something obvious

Backup power isn't there to prevent brownouts (although it can do that sometimes, believe it or not). It's there to prevent BLACKouts.

You need to use accumulator that are throttled so they don't discharged to early to make sure you avoid blackout. What you instead describe with your word previously sound like a priority system that will not prevent blackout.

You say "i want this for this reason" but it appears to someone maybe willing to help that the thing you wish won't help for the reason you mention.