Smart battery question

[Vash(88)]

Do I need all of my batteries in a set to be "smart"? It seems as though I just need the one to control the generator while ethe rest are standard

[SKull]

Yes, one will do. What also works is to have one smart wire and smart battery per generator. Even if the generators themselves aren't connected, all the batteries will drain at the same level anyway, and therefore start the generators at the same time.

[cainboy]

Personally I prefer to just have 1 smart battery per generator cluster, to control in which order my generators kick in, and then use 0 reg batteries.
This way: Basically negligible heat generation, my precious resources are saved for longer.


To answer your question: If you really want to use batteries to store power, and you do not care about heat, or electrical loss, then yes, you can use just reg batteries / jumbo batteries, and only use smart for the generators.

[SKull]

The battery heat can be easily mitigated with a couple of wheezeworts though. Personally I use quite a lot of manual power these days. Many things aren't in continuous use, and some wheels to fill a single battery saves more important resources like natural gas. Particularly for the mega expensive but non-essential entertainment buildings. Not spending any natural resources on that absurd drain. If they want to be entertained they will have to run on hamster wheels every day to get the batteries filled before their breaks.

[Evilsod]

I admit that I'm probably underutilising my power right now as I haven't really teched up properly yet but I have so much untapped power I don't see how you could ever be in a situation where you wouldn't power everything that isn't miles from your main base without Manual once you build the infrastructure.

I have about 2 tons of Hydrogen piped into Gas Reservoirs from cleansing biomes and excess from the SPOM.
2 Natural Gas Geysers, 1 of which has been running for a while with a decent amount of space so I have 1-1.5 ton of Natural Gas. I'm currently working on actually tapping into them properly.
I also have 200 tons of coal and a currently blocked Steam Vent.

If I built them I feel like I have power for days. Right now I'm just using Coal with a single Smart Battery (in reference to the OP) as I have no need to store power.
Wheezeworts are a finite resource. I stuffed 8 into my twin SPOM and as I'm finding out, Transformers do start to generate some heat over time. I also haven't found an AETN anywhere yet despite having scouted a significant amount of the map.

[SKull]

Wheeseworts prevent any heat from getting out. I like to space these things so I have a wort, the battery, a wort, the generator and then a third wort on the other side. If you have a transformer there, then just add a fourth wheeze. Depends how much the gen is running obviously, but I tend to have chilled electrical buildings doing this rather than hot ones. And you do find something like 30+ worts if you reveal the entire map, so it's not as if you run out of them early on.

[Angpaur]

Originally posted by SKull:

Wheeseworts prevent any heat from getting out

Any heat? What do you mean by that? You sound like you mean wheezworts have unlimited cooling power.

[NGMZeroX]

If i recall correctly, a smart battery discharge smaller ammount than the other two batteries. Upgrading to smart batteries is useful if our power grid have idle times.

I usually use one battery to control a cluster of power generators, If the generators have to be far away I build another battery to save on refined metal early on.

[L37]

IMO while combining regular batteries with smart ones technically works it is not a good idea. Regular battery can store more, but never will in such config, because generators will be turned off by smart battery (which stores less power) when it is full. And all ther batteries will waste power constantly over time.
What i generally do is just use few smart batteries to control different generator types/clusters, then for theoretically possible scenario when i overload my power system enough to drain those few batteries and run out of power i build a bunch of "standby" coal or petroleum generators with their own smart battery and set it to turn on at very low storage, like ~5%. This way i do not waste power/resources over time and do not run out of power either.

As for manual generators... they use most precious resource - dupe time, everything in game is limited by it and using whole day just to generate somewhere <400W sustained is IMO incredibly wastefull.

[FDru]

A single smart battery can power an entire base if you have enough generators and transformers. The less waste, the better?

[SKull]

Originally posted by angpaur:

Originally posted by SKull:

Wheeseworts prevent any heat from getting out

Any heat? What do you mean by that? You sound like you mean wheezworts have unlimited cooling power.

No, but battery/transformer heat. They can not cool down lava, volcanoes and steam vents.

[Elidrin]

Originally posted by FDru:

A single smart battery can power an entire base if you have enough generators and transformers. The less waste, the better?

Personally I use 1 battery each for: Coal (5%), Hydrogen (10%), Natural Gas (20%)

Each battery turns on the respective power source. The batteries are the backbone of my power grid.

The idea is that at 20% natural gas is used as it is a very replentishable resource. If the drain is serious and the battery gets down to 10% then the hydrogen generator kicks in to pick up the slack. Lastly at 5% the coal generators kick in as coal is a much more finite (and dirtier) resource.

[cainboy]

Originally posted by Elidrin:

Originally posted by FDru:

A single smart battery can power an entire base if you have enough generators and transformers. The less waste, the better?

Personally I use 1 battery each for: Coal (5%), Hydrogen (10%), Natural Gas (20%)

Each battery turns on the respective power source. The batteries are the backbone of my power grid.

The idea is that at 20% natural gas is used as it is a very replentishable resource. If the drain is serious and the battery gets down to 10% then the hydrogen generator kicks in to pick up the slack. Lastly at 5% the coal generators kick in as coal is a much more finite (and dirtier) resource.

Just curious, but where do you put Petroleum on your list? and for Solar? (since its not exactly an on / off thing)

[CoolNitro]

Originally posted by cainboy:

Just curious, but where do you put Petroleum on your list? and for Solar? (since its not exactly an on / off thing)

I use the same sort of staggered power system so I'll add my take on it.

I haven't personally built any solar yet but given it's nature you could just hook it up with no smart battery and have it be the first power source when its active.

As for petroleum when ever I have played long enough to make use of it I often stick it close to but before coal say 8% if going by Elidrin's setup. To be honest I rarely make use of power hungery buildings like aqua tuners and stuff so I often feel that Petroleum generators are overkill.