What's the meaning of the blue line: Max cons in energy?

[Mr Fantastic]

Why is it a line?
https://ibb.co/9qGkqZ1

Is it the difference between production and energy it takes to produce the energy?

[Crackjack]

The blue line represents the power cost if all of your machines were to be active at the same time, when a machine is idle it doesnt consume power

Yellow light: Idle
Green: Active
Red: Not Active

[Taco Cat]

Max consumption...should be pretty straight forward or not? The maximum consumed if all your machines are running at the same time.

[kaddim]

To address the "why is it a line" question - it's a line because the max that machines will draw is constant. If you add a Constructor or Assembler to the power grid (even if it isn't making anything), you should see the line "bump up". Much the same way that the power generation line bumps up when you add another power generator. Hope that helps!

[Illuminia]

(Orange) Consumption - a real-time graph of your current energy use, dips up and down as machines pause while waiting for input, or for output to empty to make room, etc.

(dark Grey) Production - Amount of energy being produced currently.

(light Grey) Capacity - Total maximum amount of energy that could be produced. Biomass burners won't produce if there isn't demand. I'm not sure if Power Storage potential output is included in this or not. (maybe?)

(Blue) Max Consumption - If every machine on your network was running at the exact same time. As machines won't run if their storage output is full, once you fill up your storage containers you aren't likely to see everything running at the same time. Becomes a balancing act as you could have more machines than your max production could support at once, and use Power Storage and bets on not having everything running at the exact same time.


If you add (or remove) machines, it affects the graph in real-time as well.... but since it shows only a small amount of time, you may not see the "Production" have a jump if you don't look at it short after the machine change.

[Vectorspace]

Originally posted by Crackjack:

The blue line represents the power cost if all of your machines were to be active at the same time, when a machine is idle it doesnt consume power

Yellow light: Idle
Green: Active
Red: Not Active

Idle machines actually draw 0.1MW of power

[Man's Best Friend]

Originally posted by Illuminia:

(light Grey) Capacity - Total maximum amount of energy that could be produced. Biomass burners won't produce if there isn't demand. I'm not sure if Power Storage potential output is included in this or not. (maybe?)

Storage is not reflected on the capacity line as their maximum output in MW is technically infinite. You could run 10GW off a single storage, it would just only run for 30 seconds.

[Illuminia]

Originally posted by HTTP Error 418: I'm a teapot:

Originally posted by Illuminia:

(light Grey) Capacity - Total maximum amount of energy that could be produced. Biomass burners won't produce if there isn't demand. I'm not sure if Power Storage potential output is included in this or not. (maybe?)

Storage is not reflected on the capacity line as their maximum output in MW is technically infinite. You could run 10GW off a single storage, it would just only run for 30 seconds.

Good to know - I wasn't aware of that!

[Dragonmaster]

Just to add as well, power storages don't affect the blue line either since they only ever take excess energy.

[LazerRay]

A good rule of thumb is to have a large gap between Max Production/Capacity (Grey) and Max Consumption (Blue), that way you don't blow fuses when you add machines or use the Hoverpack. I myself keep a nice range between these two lines and have yet to run into issues and completely ditched the need for Biomass Burners (the only ones left are on the HUB and are not even connected to my power grid)

Power Storage helps act as a buffer if you overload your power grid or cut the wrong cable.

[mansman]

There are also 2 variable power draws in game that I'm aware of. Train locomotives draw a variable amount of power at any given time. I believe the maximum 110 MW is reflected in that line. Also, particle accelerators start off with lower draw and increase over their production cycle. The maximum draw of these should also be reflected correctly.