Power info request

[Sta7ic]

Disclaimer: I write energy software.

I'm trying to balance my power s.t. I have 3x wind generation for my base, but I'm getting tired of eyeballing how many generators I have. It would be really nice if the 'grid' window displayed the following:
Wind/Solar generation: currently, capacity (maintainence), max capacity
Current Load, Total Load

Also, please PLEASE add some information somewhere about day/night duration, AND fix the units on the power storage. I cannot find enough data to determine how much power storage I need to last the night on batteries, and the units don't make enough sense to run the arithmatic.

[slxpress]

You can check the time by looking in the upper right hand corner of the screen. It will either show the various materials you have, or if you hit T it will toggle it to showing overall population, the day/night cycle (and something else I can't remember off the top of my head).

If you put your cursor on the day/night cycle icon a popup will show you the time.

The day/night cycle lasts from 6 to 6 - in other words, a 12 hour cycle. Not necessarily realistic, but it's a gameplay thing. Also, solar panels don't shut down --- and more importantly, they don't start right back up --- on the hour. It takes them a bit to wind down, and a little bit to crank up.

You're right that there's no way to tell at a glance how much is solar and how much is wind generation. You can see current load vs total load by either hitting F4, or clicking on a solar panel and/or turbine.

I do understand the desire for more information.

I tend to stay away form wind turbines because they're inconsistent, other than on the first planet, where I use them primarily in case sandstorms hit at an inconvenient moment, which shuts down the solar production. But at least then I can count on them to produce maximum power. Other than that, it's too unreliable for my tastes.

Given that, I try to at least have double the solar capacity of my base. But as you've pointed out, without a solar/wind breakdown, that can involved counting out panels to figure out exactly where I'm at.

In the early going, I try to build 2 power collectors for every very large solar panel. Once the base is big enough, I simply build a couple of power collectors anytime I'm down to two or three by morning. The key is the ensure it's the lack of power collectors that's the issue, and not the fact I'm simply producing too little power, and therefore the power collectors I do have are not filling up.

Not sure if any of that is helpful, but I hope so.

[Sta7ic]

Some observations and calculations on a Barren Moon say that the day-night cycle is 340 Ticks, and confirms that the day and night cycles are of equal length.

This also means that one 12500E battery will provide 36.7 power overnight on a full charge.

[martiño]

The day/night time has been tweaked for gameplay purposes:

Planets 1 and 2: 60% day, 40% night
Planets 3 and 4: 50% day, 50% night

[Sta7ic]

The ratio affects solar duty cycles -- and not-so-subtlely boosts the solar panel duty cycle. With storage, the biggest determinant is the absolute length of the night cycle. "How long will it take to discharge the battery?" That's normally a measure of capacity (kWh) / load (kW). If kWh/kW is greater than the night cycle, in hours, that's a problem for the colonists (aka player).

The lack of units on the power storage makes the calculation a little more troublesome. "24 hour day-night cycles, 12 and 12, so 80 kW gen for 40 kW load ... how much storage is 12.5kE?" In practice, the 340-tick-at-4x night cycle means 12500E = 441.12 kWh.

@martino, if you want some UI feedback from someone in the energy industry, feel free to PM me. This is a fun little game and I'd be happy to contribute.

[martiño]

The reason why we didn't specify the units of energy storage is because it would probably be KW/s (seconds as in real time seconds, not game seconds), and nobody knows what those units are.

When I play myself, I end up checking the power storage charts quite often, this is really where all the information is, if you know how to look for it:

a) If you hit the top of the chart it means you are filling the collectors during the day
b) If you are hitting the bottom of the charts you either need more collectors or generators depending on wether a) is happening

I would admit that I don't have a clue of how this works in the real world, if you have any references you want to share with us we will have a lok and see if they are reasonably easy to implement.

Regards.

[Sta7ic]

As I wrote in the OP, I write software the energy industry.

Some of this is straightforward unit analysis:
W - "watt" - basic unit of power
Wh - "watt-hour" - basic unit of energy - power*time
kW - kilowatt - 1000 W
kWh - kilowatt-hour - 1000Wh

In general, power companies use kW for the sake of brevity. The typical home water heater consumes about 4.5kW. If it runs for 15 minutes, it consumes about 1.125 kWh (0.25 h *4500 kW).
Power generation is oftentimes in megawatts (MW), since a given generator can serve thousands of customers. These are also huge units -- a 5MW wind turbine has a diameter of 125m or so. An 80kW unit ("very large" in game) has a diameter of about 18m. A 21st century solar unit clocking in at 18m*18m will generate about 50kW. A 5MW solar unit would cover 180m*180m, easily a typical base in the game.
This says that Planetbase solar is about twice as efficient, whereas wind power is comparable. This is believable, since rotating turbines are very well-researched, but solar cells are about 30% efficient.

Household appliances are usually measured in kWh-over-time, since they rarely run at 'full power'. Refrigerators are insulated so that the compressor runs less. Water heaters, insulated to keep the water warm, but need to run as cold water replaces hot shower water. Dishwashers run once or twice a day for an hour. Washer/dryer combos, an hour each, once a week. We can hand-wave and say that the 4500W water heater consumes a steady 450W if it only runs 10% of the time. In practice, it'd be 4500W * 24h * 10%/day = 10.8 kWh per day. (unit analysis, h/day = unitless scalar, so we're still talking kW)
In that regard, it makes sense to say that a meal maker consumes 0.5kW, since it isn't running at full power all day, but only part of the day.

All these units should be in 'game time', rather than real-time. You're effectively simulating the colony, and being able to describe game systems in game units, rather than player units, will save a lot of sanity. Two ideas for implementing this are to either write ticks such that they are a fraction of an hour, and calculate accordingly, or to identify the ratio of real-time to sim-time and scale time-based labels accordingly (ie, 12500 kW-ticks, but you know 28 1/3 ticks-at-4x, so 12500/TICKS_PER_HOUR kWh).
I do not recommend modeling the per-dome stations with more detail than "constant power load". It becomes a hassle to balance things out between desired draw, duty cycles, and other things. It would also wind up inadvertantly creative load curves, drawing more power when colonists are awake, thus leading players to call for more control over day/night/graveyard shifts and noise like that. Unwanted complexity, but an interesting power engineering model. That's also getting into "research" territory, rather than "entertainment".

After saying waaaay too much ... I'd still love generation type subtotals on the grid page, but that's a pie-in-the-sky request.

[The Great Gazoo]

I would like to have more info available, also. Tools such as lists of buildings, including sizes, list of components, possibly including their building location, with the lists hyper-linked to go to that item. A minimap with colour-coded buildings and navigation capability would be nice, too. I think I had more but I can't think of them right now...