When Energy Exchangers Discharge

[Jahaga]

For a while, I thought energy exchangers set to discharge only do so when your power grid isn't meeting demand. Unfortunately, that's not how they work. Your power grid consumes the energy exchangers first, then tap into everything else.

This design doesn't make sense. Accumulators are essentially batteries. Batteries are typically used as backups when a power grid fails. I think it makes more sense for energy exchangers to begin discharging only when your power demand exceeds the power supply of thermal, geothermal, fusion, solar, and wind. The rate at which energy exchangers discharge can also adjust to what your power grid demands from the energy exchanger. If your power grid needs 25MW of additional power, then your energy exchanger will start discharging, but only enough to produce 25MW.

Thoughts?

[Dragonmaster]

Discharging Energy Exchangers are the highest priority and will DISCHARGE FIRST before any other power on the grid is considered.
Its Discharging Accumulators that are LOWEST priority and will only Discharge if demand isn't being met.

CHARGING Accumulators and Energy Exchangers only Charge when there is a SURPLUS of energy from the Highest & Normal Priority Tiers.

Accumulators and Energy Exchangers are 2 DIFFERNT things and don't operate the same way. EE's are not "SUPER Accumulators" where they Discharge when power needs aint met.

[Jahaga]

Originally posted by Dragonmaster:

Discharging Energy Exchangers are the highest priority and will DISCHARGE FIRST before any other power on the grid is considered.
Its Discharging Accumulators that are LOWEST priority and will only Discharge if demand isn't being met.

CHARGING Accumulators and Energy Exchangers only Charge when there is a SURPLUS of energy from the Highest & Normal Priority Tiers.

Accumulators and Energy Exchangers are 2 DIFFERNT things and don't operate the same way. EE's are not "SUPER Accumulators" where they Discharge when power needs aint met.

I was referring to energy exchangers specifically and how they work. I edited the original post to better reflect this.

I know how energy exchangers work. I'm suggesting a change to how discharge works. Just like when they begin charging ONLY when there's a surplus in your power grid, they should ONLY discharge when your grid has a power deficit.

[Naelain]

I Believe the reason for this is they are using excess energy from other locations to power that grid. IE if you have a huge system with a massive production Dyson Sphere, you use that to power your grid and use the Exchanger to fill accumulators and send them to another planet in another system to power that. You are basically using the original system grid to entirely power another planet by just shipping accumulators back and forth.

So Exchangers are just extensions of the original grid.

[josmith7]

The power management really needs an overhaul.

Right how, as I understand it, it works like this:
1) Energy exchangers discharge first.
2) The remaining net demand is compared to the gross production from all power production sources [1] and if X% production is required then every source produces at that same X%
3) If there's a remaining shortfall then accumulators discharge to attempt to cover it.

Which is stupid in 2 ways. First, as noted, you may want your energy exchangers to work as batteries, not as the primary power source. And second, why would you ever throttle back renewable energy output (solar, wind, geothermal, ray receivers)? All that does is burn unnecessary fuel from your other production. If you had sufficient renewable power to meet current demand then your other power plants should shut down and stop burning fuel.


Now, by manipulating the energy exchangers you can kind of work around both of these[2] -- but it's annoying and consumes a lot of space. Better if you could just set priories for power generation.


------------------
[1] wind, solar, geothermal, thermal, fusion, antimatter, ray receivers

[2] You can work around the first issue by pairing every discharging energy exchanger up with a charging one. If the energy exchangers aren't needed then the charge and discharge will cancel out and you'll have no net drain of accumulators, but if power production falls below demand then you'll be charging slower than discharging as act as a battery with your net discharge equaling the shortfall of the rest of your power production.

And you can work around the 2nd by putting all renewables on one power grid that does nothing but charge energy exchangers then move those full accumulators over to discharging energy exchangers on your main grid -- and because they discharge before any other power source they'll use the charge from your renewables to reduce fuel consumption of your other plants as much as possible.

[Dragonmaster]

I'll mention it again though, Energy Exchangers are NOT there as just "super accumulators", if they wanted that then they could of just made accumulator Mk2. Energy Exchangers are NOT batteries thats what accumulators are.

I WILL agree that an overhaul on SOME aspects could be done. For one, Non-Fuel Based Power (solar/Wind/Ray's/Geos) should be classified as 2nd Priority power and if they cover the power demand, then the fuel based power (Thermal, Fusion, Sun) as the 3rd Priority wouldn't need to run thereby saving fuel.

Right now they are all lumped together as Normal priority thus solars/wind don't give full benefit all the time unless operated at 100% demand or no fuel based generaters on the same network. That I'll agree needs a bit overhaul.

But I disgree on energy exchangers being called batteries as they shouldn't be and having them work as priority power when discharging is perfect. Having them work to cover demand goes against what they are ment to do, charge & discharge accumulators quickly while keeping it an item. Accumulators already are the battery as a building and work as such.

[kris44dad]

That is a bit odd that they work that way. But, their biggest limitation is the limited power channeling. You have to take up too much space for them to be worth the effort. Just a plaything to me.

[Jahaga]

Originally posted by Dragonmaster:

I'll mention it again though, Energy Exchangers are NOT there as just "super accumulators", if they wanted that then they could of just made accumulator Mk2. Energy Exchangers are NOT batteries thats what accumulators are.

I WILL agree that an overhaul on SOME aspects could be done. For one, Non-Fuel Based Power (solar/Wind/Ray's/Geos) should be classified as 2nd Priority power and if they cover the power demand, then the fuel based power (Thermal, Fusion, Sun) as the 3rd Priority wouldn't need to run thereby saving fuel.

Right now they are all lumped together as Normal priority thus solars/wind don't give full benefit all the time unless operated at 100% demand or no fuel based generaters on the same network. That I'll agree needs a bit overhaul.

But I disgree on energy exchangers being called batteries as they shouldn't be and having them work as priority power when discharging is perfect. Having them work to cover demand goes against what they are ment to do, charge & discharge accumulators quickly while keeping it an item. Accumulators already are the battery as a building and work as such.

Energy Exchangers takes what Accumulators do, but makes it mobile so you can transport it between planets.

The Energy Exchangers operate through Accumulators. There's no logic in changing how the Accumulator works because it's fed through an Energy Exchanger. A power grid does not use energy stored in batteries first, they're there as backup if the power grid fails. This is no different.

I don't see how Energy Exchangers and Accumulators fall in a different category than fuel-based generators when they're essentially the same thing. Energy Exchangers consume Accumlators to produce energy; the only differences are it's in a reusable container and the process can be reversed.

[--T-a-u-r-u-s--]

EE are meant only for transport energy to planets not store them

EE only use is to expand your home
Excess power surplus to other planets
When you set your home planet with good supply of accumulators to charge you basically can make planetary power grids outside off systems

You just go to other planets and slap port with delivery charged accumulators set simple discharge rout and you have connected planet on your power grid

Ther is no need to overcomplicat the EE

[MechBFP]

It’s not hard to add a “Only meet demand” or something like that. This is why the game is still early access.

It easy to see the difference in polish between this and Factorio. As much as I am loving this currently, it definitely needs more work before 1.0.

[Mowglia]

Originally posted by kris44dad:

That is a bit odd that they work that way. But, their biggest limitation is the limited power channeling. You have to take up too much space for them to be worth the effort. Just a plaything to me.

Yeah, they're just crap really. I tried using 1500 of them for the first time the other day and was sorely disappointed. Way too much overhead for way too little power.

I wanted to move the energy from a 3GW sphere that was otherwise no longer in use, to somewhere the energy would be used.

Now my plan is use the tiny sphere to generate photons, manufacture antimatter fuel rods, and transport the fuel to artificial suns.

I have no idea how efficient this process will be, or what percentage of the 3GW power will be usable elsewhere in practice, but I'm optimistic this will work much better than accumulators.

[Dirkels]

Originally posted by MechBFP:

It’s not hard to add a “Only meet demand” or something like that. This is why the game is still early access.

It easy to see the difference in polish between this and Factorio. As much as I am loving this currently, it definitely needs more work before 1.0.

That is how they work when they are the only suppliers of power on a network. So what you need to to is seperate the energy producing network(s) from the main factory network. In the power producing network(s) charge accumulators in EE's and discharge them via priority* belt in EE's in the main network (* priority over externally supplied accumulators).

[Jahaga]

Originally posted by --T-a-u-r-u-s--:

EE are meant only for transport energy to planets not store them

EE only use is to expand your home
Excess power surplus to other planets
When you set your home planet with good supply of accumulators to charge you basically can make planetary power grids outside off systems

You just go to other planets and slap port with delivery charged accumulators set simple discharge rout and you have connected planet on your power grid

Ther is no need to overcomplicat the EE

It's not complicated at all. Currently, they discharge Accumulators into the power grid regardless if it's actually needed. This change would make it so it discharges ONLY when it's needed.

For example, my planet generates 200MW of power through wind and solar, but my power demand is only 180MW. I also have an Energy Exchanger set to discharge. The way it works right now, the Energy Exchanger is going to burn through Accumulators to generate an additional 45MW of power that is not needed. Because of this, my power grids capacity is now 245MW and it's demand is still only 180MW. It's just wasting Accumulators now.

In this case, my suggestion would make the Energy Exchanger stop discharging because the 180MW demand is already met by the 200MW generated by wind and solar.

This, in no way shape or form, impacts anything about the Energy Exchanger, other than when it starts to discharge.

It's that simple.

[Dirkels]

Taking away priority from EE's would remove the ability to use them to securely burn of excess hydrogen with priority.

[Jahaga]

Originally posted by Dirkels:

Taking away priority from EE's would remove the ability to use them to securely burn of excess hydrogen with priority.

How?

[Nellvan]

Originally posted by Jahaga:

Currently, they discharge Accumulators into the power grid regardless if it's actually needed. This change would make it so it discharges ONLY when it's needed.

Uhm, no. Apart from any other reason to prioritize certain power sources, this would break the 'solar farm (or dyson sphere) exporting "free" energy' setup. When you got planets that import solar power, you want them to use that energy first, and have any local fuel based powerplants only for backup /picking up the slack, right?

Power mangagement really needs some customizable options, there's just too many ways how someone might want things to work.