Steam Power Prioritized Over Accumulators?

[Petarglio]

I have 80 steam engines, 624 solar panels and 664 accumulators. During the day, my steam power shuts off since my solar panels turn on. However, at night, my steam engines keep producing power while my accumulators just remain at full capacity. I know that steam power also fills up accumulators, but is there a way to make accumulators produce power over steam engines?

[Jupiter3927]

Have your engines turn off when accumulators are at a certain capacity.
Use the circuit network to connect an accumulator to your off-shore pump and have the pump turn on when your accumulator is below 30% or so.

You can get fancy and leave the pump on until accumulators are back to 50% with some combinators.

[Nailfoot]

I usually set up multiple furnace banks this way. The first comes on when accumulator charge is at 75%, and more the lower the charge gets.

[The_Mell]

I use this in my latest game:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1678093724
It works surprisely well even though the continued on&off switching looks strange in energy graph - but no brownouts or short blackouts as far as i can tell.
My fear of a low power moment and knowledge of wood abundance led to this design with a little bit constant fuel use.
Usually a water pump controlled setup is easier because you can just leave steam engines in your main power grid in which it has been integrated before. I had to get rid of some power poles and relocate others for mine.

Originally posted by Nailfoot:

I usually set up multiple furnace banks this way. The first comes on when accumulator charge is at 75%, and more the lower the charge gets.

Paranoia, so many laser turrets, or both?
It's a bit fancy in my opinion - both in a bad and good way.
A bit more complicated than needed on one hand but on other hand it keeps fuel consumption and pollution low.
Do you keep those steam backups on par with your growing energy demand of growing factory (because you can&want) or is it just a safety while going green?

[Nailfoot]

Oh, it's just because I can, I reckon! I dont care about pollution really. The biters dont scare me.

I guess it's just an aesthetics thing because itd accomplish the same exact thing to have them all come on at the same time, really.

[CPT Chthonbeard the Pirate]

Originally posted by Jupiter3927:

Have your engines turn off when accumulators are at a certain capacity.
Use the circuit network to connect an accumulator to your off-shore pump and have the pump turn on when your accumulator is below 30% or so.

You can get fancy and leave the pump on until accumulators are back to 50% with some combinators.

I never thought to shut the water off actually. That's a bit simpler than what I do by turning off the inserters to fuel starve the boilers. Same concept really. I'll have to try it though sometime.

Here's an example of my setup: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1678268634

If you notice I set the inserters to only run when Signal A (the accumulator's % charge) goes below 30%

[El'Brahma]

Disabling the offshore pump is a great way to do it, thanks!

Beware that you may have to feed the comparator with its own solar panel and accumulator in a closed circuit, otherwise it may turn off until the sun rises again if your energy is very low and your boilers can't retro-feed the comparator (looks like the comparator don't have priority over other consumers)

Edit: I thought now: instead of having a < 20% comparator to actively turn it on. maybe it's possible to have an inverted behavior, so the circuit actively stops the pump when acc is > 20%. I don't know well the mechanics of the logic circuits in this game.

[Nailfoot]

Originally posted by Srb:

Disabling the offshore pump is a great way to do it, thanks!

Beware that you may have to feed the comparator with its own solar panel and accumulator in a closed circuit, otherwise it may turn off until the sun rises again if your energy is very low and your boilers can't retro-feed the comparator (looks like the comparator don't have priority over other consumers)

Edit: I thought now: instead of having a < 20% comparator to actively turn it on. maybe it's possible to have an inverted behavior, so the circuit actively stops the pump when acc is > 20%. I don't know well the mechanics of the logic circuits in this game.

Accumulators already do this. Wire an accumulator directly to the offshore pump. Enable offshore pump when accumulator is <%50... or whatever percent you want.

[El'Brahma]

Oh. There is no need for a comparator?

[Jupiter3927]

No comparator unless you want it to have some kind of memory.
Directly connecting the accumulator to the pump could cause the pump to flicker on and off really fast.

[Halliwax]

When I tried the basic setup I got the unstable on/off flickering behavior. A 3 comparator setup as an SR latch is more complicated but seems to be necessary to get the desired behavior so far as I can tell.

[astrosha]

Actually, more solar panels/accumulators are needed. 25 panels to 21 accumulators is the standard ratio.

[Nailfoot]

Originally posted by Halliwax:

When I tried the basic setup I got the unstable on/off flickering behavior. A 3 comparator setup as an SR latch is more complicated but seems to be necessary to get the desired behavior so far as I can tell.

It doesn't really matter if the pumps flicker on and off rapidly. Unless you just don't like seeing it in the power grid graph.

[Jupiter3927]

Flickering doesn't waste any power or resources.
All of the water that gets pumped in is converted to exactly that amount of steam.
All that steam is then converted into power for your accumulators to absorb.

[AlexMBrennan]

Are you sure about that? I can't imagine that having hundreds of pumps switching on and off 30 times per second is going to improve UPS

[Nailfoot]

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

Are you sure about that? I can't imagine that having hundreds of pumps switching on and off 30 times per second is going to improve UPS

Why would you have 100s of pumps switching? Unless you are a masochist, I would think you would be using nuclear or solar long before you need 100s of pumps for coal power.

Also, I was referring to in-game concerns, not the game's performance. You may be right, it might effect UPS. I am certainly not gonna test it.

But you certainly can.