Power Issue

[Luminaro]

I put in about 50 hours to this game. Loved it so far. Just unlocked the manufacturer and all those other things. However I had a power issue that honestly makes me want to stop playing now. I had multiple coal plants and bio burners going, The coal was running mostly everything, but I always fed the bio burners also just to keep it running. While I was working on my oil plant which is a separate grid all together, my regular grid just died for no reason whatsoever. I had to add 8 bio burners to get it running again. I was having a lot of fun, but there is enough logistics and management in this game to have sudden power spikes that destroy your entire progress. Whatever that is, I hope they remove it from the game before launch.

[CursedPanther]

Make sure you have enough of both coal and water for the generators to run at 100% capacity first.

Many players who are transitioning from biofuel burner to coal generator often forget that they are probably sharing the coal for steel production also, which may leave the generators starving on input.

[Taco Cat]

To be honest it is most likely a problem in your power setup thats causing the issues. If your coal plants are not enough they a) get Not enough coal/water or b) you simply need more.
I would also suggest you make one big power grid. Makes things allot more easy. But thats ofcourse personal preference

[Luminaro]

This can't be the case. The entire thing was running for hours upon hours while I was doing things elsewhere. I didn't add any more machines in that time. It just randomly shut down after hours of use. I read somewhere else that it might be good to have your water pumps on a separate power grid so I guess I will try that.

[sansee]

"running mostly everything"?

Don't understand why you would waste too much time on bioburners at this point...

You are supposed to move away from manual power generation and over to automatic ones (with 100% resource intake) as soon as possible. Only leave bio burners on as a "minor reserve", but the instant they kick in they only provide power for a limited time, based on the demand. The more they need to feed the grid the faster they burn through the biomatter.

The fact that you would rather build bioburners than coal generators and keeping separate grids says it all... and then you basically put too much pressure on them for a longer period. Connect them together, look at the graph and keep your capacity WAY higher than the others by exclusively building many coal generators. It'll make your life so much easier...

The power switch will trip if the demand is higher than capacity - it's that simple.

EDIT: Sure, bugs can come up when you least expect it, but most seems to handle the power grid just fine...

[alan0n]

Originally posted by Luminaro:

This can't be the case. The entire thing was running for hours upon hours while I was doing things elsewhere. I didn't add any more machines in that time. It just randomly shut down after hours of use. I read somewhere else that it might be good to have your water pumps on a separate power grid so I guess I will try that.

Check your production graph, if its showing your max power capacity dropping off then the breaker blowing the problem is in the inputs for either your coal or biomass burners. If the max output isnt dropping before the breaker pops then you are just exceeding the max usage. This might only happen once every few hours, as it might be something as silly as literally all your machines happen to cycle out of idle at the exact same time.

[Taco Cat]

Originally posted by alan0n:

Originally posted by Luminaro:

This can't be the case. The entire thing was running for hours upon hours while I was doing things elsewhere. I didn't add any more machines in that time. It just randomly shut down after hours of use. I read somewhere else that it might be good to have your water pumps on a separate power grid so I guess I will try that.

Check your production graph, if its showing your max power capacity dropping off then the breaker blowing the problem is in the inputs for either your coal or biomass burners. If the max output isnt dropping before the breaker pops then you are just exceeding the max usage. This might only happen once every few hours, as it might be something as sill as literally all your machines happen to cycle out of idle at the exact same time.

but this CANT BE THE CASE as OP already stated Sry could not resist

[alan0n]

Originally posted by The ChickenGod:

Originally posted by alan0n:

Check your production graph, if its showing your max power capacity dropping off then the breaker blowing the problem is in the inputs for either your coal or biomass burners. If the max output isnt dropping before the breaker pops then you are just exceeding the max usage. This might only happen once every few hours, as it might be something as sill as literally all your machines happen to cycle out of idle at the exact same time.

but this CANT BE THE CASE as OP already stated :MrTree::tabbycat::doggie: Sry could not resist

Hehe as someone who has hundreds of hours in this game logged and still occasionally blows a breaker.... I can assure you it does happen, even with the best of planning.

[Luminaro]

Originally posted by alan0n:

Originally posted by Luminaro:

This can't be the case. The entire thing was running for hours upon hours while I was doing things elsewhere. I didn't add any more machines in that time. It just randomly shut down after hours of use. I read somewhere else that it might be good to have your water pumps on a separate power grid so I guess I will try that.

Check your production graph, if its showing your max power capacity dropping off then the breaker blowing the problem is in the inputs for either your coal or biomass burners. If the max output isnt dropping before the breaker pops then you are just exceeding the max usage. This might only happen once every few hours, as it might be something as silly as literally all your machines happen to cycle out of idle at the exact same time.

I will try this. I'd like to move over to fully automatic power, but I haven't found enough coal nodes to do that yet, so i still rely a little bit on the bio burners, but i always keep them maxed with solid fuel. I have oil with coke starting to go now, so I can add that to the grid and hopefully get rid of the bio burners once and for all.

[Zenthar]

Main thing is to read your power grid graph to see where the problem is. When the breaker trips you'll likely see a moment where your consumption exceeded your capacity causing a trip. If it blew its simply a matter of you need more power being made on that grid or you need to reduce the demand.

[Luminaro]

Right. There must have been some moment where not enough water was going in, or like someone said, all the machines came off idle at once.. cause without changing anything I am well below my max capacity again after I got it up and going.

[DrNewcenstein]

The indicator lights on your generators will tell you if one has a problem, unless they're all having a problem by the time you get there.

Given the material flow rate, it's easy for small gaps in supply to cause an ever-decreasing inventory, and eventually the generator burns faster than it receives.

If you're in Grass Fields, there are 4 coal nodes on the eastern side of the purple forest, above a lake surrounded by oil deposits. Pave the lake, place coal generators on it, link them down to a single pole, cut out holes for water extractors, belt the coal down to the generators, and wait until they're all full of coal and water before connecting them to the main grid from the single pole.

[CursedPanther]

Originally posted by CoolRick:

I just had a similar problem to you, I almost came here to post. There really isn't enough power info available to understand what's wrong.

My entire grid crashed today. To find out what's the problem, I had to travel the entire map and test each power location (without tunnels cause they're powered!). Turns out, one of my fuel generator power plants had a backup of resin I wasn't quite getting rid of, over a long period had eventually clogged the generators and crashing my system.

Like OP, my power plants aren't easily turned on again once down. My fault, I had a bad design where I pushed fuel up and those need power...so I had to build a few iterations but eventually turned everything back on. It was a lot of work and not all that fun. Wish I had more info available to do all this quicker.

That maybe the case pre Update 4.

Ever since Update 4 has been deployed with the revamped and ever more informative real time power graph that you can access at literally any connected power pole or power generator, your analysis of your current power grid situation should be easier and clearer than ever before. Moreover, the addition of Power Switch adds the option for players who want to compartmentalize their individual production grids and can now do it with ease.

All the info is out there already but it will still take the player some effort to reach out himself to get it, especially with the game at the current stage featuring major updates fairly frequently.

[Exile «Foxy» (Ryder17z)]

If you are close to the limit for a grid, it may crash when the game reloads. (because currently whenever you load the game, the grid is effectively restarted)

[O'Lucky]

Originally posted by Luminaro:

This can't be the case. The entire thing was running for hours upon hours while I was doing things elsewhere. I didn't add any more machines in that time. It just randomly shut down after hours of use. I read somewhere else that it might be good to have your water pumps on a separate power grid so I guess I will try that.

no dont do that, the water will stay in the pumps no matter what, with or without power. I thought the exact same thing as you.

3 things helped me,
-1 check your power grid electricity wires making sure they are actually all connected to the main factory. (I found my power grid wasn't actually connected for whatever reason even though i could see a wire from the grid to my main base area)
-2 have every group of factories be connected to a single pole, so if you disconnect that one pole from a line of electirical poles connecting everything else, you can effecitvely stop/start producing that one good temporaily if you dont need it.
-3 those water pump boosters that you place along water tubes to allow the water to go up in elevation can (as in my game) hide breaks in the tube. For example i had a tube go straight up and it wasn't until i removed the entire pipeline that i found no pipe existing under one of the flow boosters.

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

Something no one has said here: To avoid brownouts and blowing breakers just monitor your power graph and make sure two things: 1.) The supply graph at the top is flat and never fluxuates. If the top part of the graph is fluxuating then your power supply (power plants) are uneven. Fix that first and make sure they are stable first. Then once you have that sorted: 2.) Make sure you are always producing at least +30% power over what you are currently using. Every time you add a new group of buildings check the power graph. If your demand is less than 30% of your supply at the top (Getting really close to it) then add more power plants before it gets down to within 10% of your supply. If you manage it properly and keep an eye on your power supply and usage then it's super easy peasy lemon-squeezy to avoid brownouts and blowing a breaker.