Troubleshooting power

[Fubar]

All of the sudden fuse broke, and have no idea why. Worse, no idea where the problem is, this is my first game and building style and locations are a mess. I'm on tier 8, so there is kinda lot of stuff.
I did not add any more machinery, so no idea whats the deal. And cant even add more powerplants, fuse keeps breaking,
Does the game have some other way to troubleshoot than disconnecting stuff and starting plants one by one?

[kLuns]

check all belts, pipes, connection etc. Check max consumption, check power production.

Screenshot of the layout?

Accidentically removed a cable somewhere?

[Mist of Majora]

The above are all good things to check, but since it's your first playthrough, I'll add some more basic tips to help you do so.

) A fuse being blown isn't always an indication of you running out of power (in common terms at least), but also an indication that your power grid is not being able to handle the fluctuations of your factory.

2) If you click on a power pole you can get a graph of your current power stats for THAT GRID (WHEN it's operational, if the fuse is blown for a while the graph will be 0 obviously). Seems basic, but if the power poles in your far factory are reading less total power than other areas, you know it's not fully (or at all) connected depending on the reading.

2.5) This is less a tip but more of personal advice for restarting power. If you're trying to get power online, some power setups need a tiny bit to get back to full power production. I'd personally recommend disconnecting your power grid from everything, making sure your power grid is where it should be at your power area(s), and THEN connecting to your factory (preferably in stages for each factory area so you can see where the power draw is coming from)

Other things to check are idle machines that draw little or no power which can catch new players by surprise when they get running again. Power shards create larger fluctuations of your power grid that can cause the power consumption to rise JUST enough to trip. If you're running coal or oil power, they are especially annoying in that they can function properly at first, but you don't usually see whether you are properly feeding them enough water/oil/coal until it's working pretty hard. Pipe thoroughput can be annoying too in that, just because the pipe supports 300 units per second, doesn't mean the machine attached is GETTING 300 units per second, depending on your setup.

[pemmons1]

A related question from a beginner: I am experimenting with underclocking. My biomass burner shows consumption 13.1 MW but Maximum consumption at 9 MW. How can consumption be greater than maximum consumption? I took the clock speed of the biomass burner down to 67%, so it is generating 13.4 MW. The blue line of the graph is considerably below the purple line, but when I tried reducing production to just over 9MW, the breaker tripped immediately.

This is confusing. Is the biomass burner burning fuel unnecessarily? If I put the biomass burner clock speed back up to 100%, the fuel consumption per minute goes way up. I was thinking/hoping that it consumed no more fuel than what was needed for the power actually used. But maybe there is no point in underclocking except to balance output from one production unit to the input of another.

[Remnar]

For me, 10-12 bio mass burners gets me by until I reach coal power. I know bio mass burners are a pain; but if you set up a system to make bio fuel from plants and wood, it'll be fine. You won't have the belt speed for efficiency, but it won't matter. Put in enough base materials so you wind up with a full box of bio fuel. Bio mass burners only use the power needed, instead of creating a constant amount. Regardless, make enough bio fuel burners to cover your needs. Don't over or under clock them.

With coal power you need (well you don't need to, but I suggest it) to start with 8 and scale up in groups of 8. Fuel power, start with 10 and scale up. You may need to redesign your oil processing systems to do so.

[Remnar]

When it comes to trouble shooting power, it doesn't matter on the set up. If you don't have enough power generators, or they ran out of fuel, or running at poor efficiency, then power outages will happen.

Check your systems, make sure they are running at 100% efficiency. Sometimes it's hard to figure out why they are not. I know I had a hard time dealing with my oil set up for a while, because liquids were not getting to the machines properly even though the math was spot on.

I had to over clock one machine to push more fluid into the system for a few minutes, then it was fine and I reset it to normal clock speed. Make sure your pumps are pushing the liquid up the pipes properly. Make sure your physical items are efficient. For my oil build, I had to add more and more empty plastic containers. Then you have to wait a while and go do something else.

[Dreaminway]

Some of my tips when it comes to power (I'm still semi new)
1. When you make a power plant, make it in sections with a SINGLE wire bridging these sections.
2. When pulling power out of the power plant to other factories, use a SINGLE wire that will branch off from there.
2.5 Recommend this even as you branch out. Connect all factories via a SINGLE wire going in that branch out. There is zero need in having several connections all over. You can even follow this logic for differing floors of a factory. Single line going between floors and then on that floor the cable goes out to all machines on that floor.

These tips can help you if you do blow a fuse. As you can remove a single wire to isolate say your coal power plant, and removing of another can isolate a small section of that planet, enough to jump start it with bio generators, then as that power comes on, can reconnect to the rest of the coal line, and from there reconnect everything else bit by bit.

If you have unlocked power switches under the Caterium tree in the M.A.M. you can put it between each single wire so instead of removing wires you can just flip switches.

Thankfully in Update 8 they are giving us a fuse box like system so if the powers lost we don't look all power globally, only power to stuff less vital. But even so I will always devide my power and use a single line out from my power plants so if something happens, I can restart everything bit by bit.

Bio gens kickstarting 4 coal plants that has a bin of backup coal to help and 1 water extractor, that kick starts half of the total coal plant plus the miners bringing in the coal for the whole set up, and that half kickstarts the other half. Once that's all restarted that helps kick start the fuel plant, that I have set up in groups of 8. Each helping to kick start the next batch. Once all that's back up THEN I work on reconnecting each factory, checking the power after each one until either the system is stable or I find where I went over my power limit and cue plans for a new power plant.

Yes this does mean a LOT of running around. But that is pretty much how I kickstart stuff.

If your powers out in full, I say use this time and clean up your writing, make it easier on you to find out where each power plant is connected to. You do not need everything connected to everything. A single line from place to place is all you need, and makes it a LOT easier as you don't have to guess how many lines might be hooked up to unwanted stuff when your trying to deal with power.