Gleba Backup Power

[Softshine798]

For Gleba, I'm getting sick of having to travel all the way back there for the sole purpose of inserting fuel because of a blackout going on. I even tried to create a small section of solar panels and accumulators in a separate electric network, and once the main power went down, it should've provided just enough power to at least get them working very slowly, and eventually back to full speed.

Clearly this isn't working; how would I go to actually fix this?

[kremlin]

You're ignoring the heating towers. You want to process spoilage into carbon and fruit into rocket fuel to feed heating towers that feed heat exchangers that feed turbines to generate power. You generate tons of power just from the waste you burn.

[Quillithe]

Yeah, basically the whole fruit part of your factory is a net positive on power and what you do with metal (and defenses) is the drain.

So just plant and process more fruit (making rocket fuel helps - especially as a backup - but probably 80% of my power is just burning jelly and mash)

[CasualGamer]

+1 on creating excess jelly and mash. I'm going to look into making more carbon though and see if the towers get hotter than the 790 degrees they seem to average now.

[Fel]

What are you using as power that you constantly run out?
You can fairly easily automate rocket fuel, burn it in a heat tower and make steam for power.

You could make a small factory just for that purpose on the side, fed by solar power if you want but not necessarily.
For example, you could use a splitter to send the rocket fuel to the heat tower(s) for it in priority and the surplus to heating tower powering the rest of the factory.

Using a "brown-out" (everything very slow) approach usually doesn't work out, even inserters end up struggling to grab things on a belt.
On Gleba that has most things that spoil, it is even worse.

You could also automate the transport of some uranium cells (or its ingredients) from Nauvis and use nuclear power since there is plenty of water on Gleba.

[Quillithe]

Originally posted by CasualGamer:

+1 on creating excess jelly and mash. I'm going to look into making more carbon though and see if the towers get hotter than the 790 degrees they seem to average now.

The issue with carbon is you make it from spoilage and a smooth factory shouldn't be making too much spoilage too often. Rocket Fuel is definitely a good option.

Personally I have rocket fuel with circuit conditions that kick in if temperatures drop so they use all the garbage first and just nab the occasional rocket fuel.


As a tip though if you want to use carbon I think recycling nutrients into spoilage is a good method of making sure you have enough - a SINGLE bioflux can make 20 spoilage that way which might actually compete with rocket fuel? I'm too lazy to calculate and I'm already making rocket fuel for rockets.

[Softshine798]

Originally posted by Fel:

What are you using as power that you constantly run out?
You can fairly easily automate rocket fuel, burn it in a heat tower and make steam for power.

You could make a small factory just for that purpose on the side, fed by solar power if you want but not necessarily.
For example, you could use a splitter to send the rocket fuel to the heat tower(s) for it in priority and the surplus to heating tower powering the rest of the factory.

Using a "brown-out" (everything very slow) approach usually doesn't work out, even inserters end up struggling to grab things on a belt.
On Gleba that has most things that spoil, it is even worse.

You could also automate the transport of some uranium cells (or its ingredients) from Nauvis and use nuclear power since there is plenty of water on Gleba.

Spoilage (logistics and dumping spoilage from Cu and Fe), carbon (logistics), and rocket fuel.

[argrond]

Just make more fuel.
Make more towers.
Make more turbines and supply them with enough steam.
And the main thing - always produce significantly more more electricity than you can consume!

[Hurkyl]

Originally posted by argrond:

Just make more fuel.
Make more towers.
Make more turbines and supply them with enough steam.
And the main thing - always produce significantly more more electricity than you can consume!

... and if something goes wrong and the system breaks down, you have to get it restarted. Thus the desire for some sort of backup system.

I've been lazy in my base and my backup system is just making sure I have a box of rocket fuel so that a manual restart is very easy by handfeeding the towers. But I can definitely appreciate the desire for something you can do remotely.

[argrond]

Originally posted by Hurkyl:

Originally posted by argrond:

Just make more fuel.
Make more towers.
Make more turbines and supply them with enough steam.
And the main thing - always produce significantly more more electricity than you can consume!

... and if something goes wrong and the system breaks down, you have to get it restarted. Thus the desire for some sort of backup system.

I've been lazy in my base and my backup system is just making sure I have a box of rocket fuel so that a manual restart is very easy by handfeeding the towers. But I can definitely appreciate the desire for something you can do remotely.

Why should anything go wrong? You are planning it, you should make it blackout-proof. )

My base on Gleba had 2 blackouts, one when I misplaced water pipe and exchangers ran out of water, another one when I put too many teslas and they simply consumed too much electricity. Both issues were when I was actively building/rearranging, so I was present there and fixed those almost immediately. After that, hundreds of hours passed and, despite power consumage of 1.5 GW, I never ever touched power supply part of Gleba, because I have still 1 GW more as a "backup". If I will need more buildings there - 2-3 more tower-exchanger-turbine blocks according to potential raise of consumage, and maybe one more fuel biochamber.

If one absolutely must have that last-chance backup, ~150 panels and ~300 accumulators may be solution. But that's all to it. I've placed 20 panels and 50 accumulators for that purpose at the very start on Gleba, never ever needed those. )

[Hurkyl]

Originally posted by argrond:

Why should anything go wrong? You are planning it, you should make it blackout-proof. )

Because errors and oversights are things that happen. Especially if you haven't figured out all the ways things can go wrong. Which is probably true even if you think you do have it figured out.

[Fletch]

You gotta make rocket fuel to build rockets, and that rocket fuel goes a LOOOONG way in heating towers to power the base with steam turbines. Just feed rocket fuel to the heating towers whenever their heat gets too low (using a simple circuit to control the inserters) from the same rocket fuel storage chest(s) that feed the rocket silos.

I also have a bunch of steam tanks, and a pump between the tanks and the turbines. That pump only kicks on when my accumulator charge gets too low (another arbitrary number I defined). I don't want my steam turbines running when solar/accumulator is enough to power the base.

For my base, solar/accumulator is the "primary" power, and the steam turbines are the backup power. My Gleba base is following Just-In-Time manufacturing process -- my goal is it generates zero spoilage -- so I am definitely not relying on any spoilage to produce electricity. All spoilage goes straight to the heating towers, but the spoilage is producing negligible heat as compared to the rocket fuel.

A single rocket fuel has 100MJ of energy -- it takes 400 spoilage to produce that same amount of power.

To sum it up:
1. solar+accumulator are primary power
2. steam turbines only kick in when accumulators are below 50% charged (arbitrary number) -- pump between steam tanks and turbines control this
3. rocket fuel is fed into heat tower only when heat tower is below 750 degrees (arbitrary number). inserters between rocket fuel belt and heating towers control this.
4. any spoilage goes straight to the towers (not regulated), and not expected to generate any significant amount of power.

[Nonotorious]

Originally posted by Fletch:

You gotta make rocket fuel to build rockets, and that rocket fuel goes a LOOOONG way in heating towers to power the base with steam turbines. Just feed rocket fuel to the heating towers whenever their heat gets too low (using a simple circuit to control the inserters) from the same rocket fuel storage chest(s) that feed the rocket silos.

I also have a bunch of steam tanks, and a pump between the tanks and the turbines. That pump only kicks on when my accumulator charge gets too low (another arbitrary number I defined). I don't want my steam turbines running when solar/accumulator is enough to power the base.

For my base, solar/accumulator is the "primary" power, and the steam turbines are the backup power. My Gleba base is following Just-In-Time manufacturing process -- my goal is it generates zero spoilage -- so I am definitely not relying on any spoilage to produce electricity. All spoilage goes straight to the heating towers, but the spoilage is producing negligible heat as compared to the rocket fuel.

A single rocket fuel has 100MJ of energy -- it takes 400 spoilage to produce that same amount of power.

To sum it up:
1. solar+accumulator are primary power
2. steam turbines only kick in when accumulators are below 50% charged (arbitrary number) -- pump between steam tanks and turbines control this
3. rocket fuel is fed into heat tower only when heat tower is below 750 degrees (arbitrary number). inserters between rocket fuel belt and heating towers control this.
4. any spoilage goes straight to the towers (not regulated), and not expected to generate any significant amount of power.

That's terrible, solar is 50% in atmosphere on gleba and and the day/night cycle is 3 minutes longer than nauvis.
Trying to "jiT" on gleba is ridiculous, if this game was anyway realistic there would be some sort of refrigerator not to mention you need spoilage for various recipes.

As other have already said the easiest way to regulate power is to wire an inserter up to a heating tower, read temp, enable when T<600. Personally i like to keep it around 600 and you can go as low as 550-ish depending on the length of your heat pipes because there is a 10+ degree drop off for every 2-ish boilers being heated.

[Fletch]

Originally posted by Nonotorious:

That's terrible, solar is 50% in atmosphere on gleba and and the day/night cycle is 3 minutes longer than nauvis.

When you first land on gleba, what are you powering things with? For me: solar+accumulator -- it is free energy with zero production required -- even though solar isn't as good on that planet as others. That initial solar/accumulator power plant is my primary power (meaning I never regulate it or shut it off), and it is enough to power everything when the base is running at idle. Of course when the base is producing stuff, then the steam turbines kick on to supplement and provide way more power than the solar/accumulators are capable of. The solar/accumulators never stop producing power, my steam turbines can/will stop because I regulate them.

Trying to "jiT" on gleba is ridiculous, if this game was anyway realistic there would be some sort of refrigerator not to mention you need spoilage for various recipes.

I like the spoilage mechanic because I've always wanted to do a JIT-based design in a factory sim, and Gleba is the only planet where a JIT design is encourage because of spoilage. You can go mod in a refrigerator if you want -- I'm not.

As other have already said the easiest way to regulate power is to wire an inserter up to a heating tower, read temp, enable when T<600. Personally i like to keep it around 600 and you can go as low as 550-ish depending on the length of your heat pipes because there is a 10+ degree drop off for every 2-ish boilers being heated.

So you do the same thing I do and described (regulate the heating towers). The only extra I do is I regulate the steam turbines using a pump between steam tanks and turbines, based on the charge in accumulators.

EDIT: if you are deadset on not having any solar power on the planet, it would be highly recommended you only use burner inserters for feeding rocket fuel to the heat towers. solar or burner inserter is the difference between a brown out and a black out.

[Nonotorious]

You can gather quite a bit of spoilage and wood from clearing out the plants to start the heating tower, which you will be doing anyway to get unlocks and ores.
The only thing i would say is maybe add a tank for steam and an extra turbine for those moments when power draw goes up with tesla turrets, but if you have artillery then attacks will be much more infrequent.

Originally posted by Fletch:

You can go mod in a refrigerator if you want -- I'm not.

I very well may just do that because it's like a sick joke the devs played on players, "here's this new mechanic and even though there is literally cryogenic science we're not gonna do anything with that".

[Fletch]

Originally posted by Nonotorious:

I very well may just do that because it's like a sick joke the devs played on players, "here's this new mechanic and even though there is literally cryogenic science we're not gonna do anything with that".

Well if you are wantonly dumping all your fruit onto belts (from the tree farms to the main factory processing area), you are overproducing pollution and spoiling precious items when your base cannot consume its production rate. That is why you use Just-In-Time processes to prevent that and entirely eliminates any need of refrigeration mods.

All it takes to JIT this is a circuit on the inserter (removing fruit from the agriculture tower) to its belt that "reads entire belt contents / hold mode" -- and only let that inserter remove fruit from the tower if "fruit < XX items" on the belt. Its just a few mouse clicks to set it up and I'm good on that part forever. I do the same on my nutrient production loops, mash/jelly loops, etc. When consumption drops, then my base automatically idles down drastically reducing waste.

You are a fan of regulating heating towers (only insert rocket fuel when "heat < X", to not waste rocket fuel), regulating the amount of fruit on a belt is the exact same concept.