How does electricity work?

[Admiral Kobi]

I have a large wind turbine up and then assume you put down a transformer within its radius to power any buildings within the transformers radius? Same with battery rack, I assume you need to have it within the radius of a wind turbine?

At the end of the day I'm not sure how to create a reasonable electric grid when I am now getting into the deep harvesters that a decent range away from each other. Ideas?

[Duality138]

Transformers are needed to transfer energy from the wind turbines/solar collectors to both buildings and battery stacks..
I like to build a 'power park' around an lighting rod. I keep power production and battery stacks within the radius of protection of the lighting rod and then just use transformers to spread the power out to the various locations it is needed.

[Easy Money]

Transformers need 1.5x the radius they have now.

[nhal]

So, just to confirm here, as I am also confused - does the transformer need to be in range of a battery rack, and a battery rack needs to be in range of the power source to start charging?

[Honeywell]

The transformer is what connects everything together and are like power lines. So the battery and power source don't need to be together to work.

It could look like this:

Power..Transformer..........Saw Mill..Transformer..........Transformer..........Battery..Transformer..


What Duality138 describes could look like this:

Power..Power..Power..
Lightening Rod..Transformer..........Transformer..........Saw Mill..Transformer..
Battery..Battery..Battery..


I really hope that helps and isn't even more confusing!

[SkiRich]

Nothing is powered, and no energy is transfered from anything unless it falls within the radius of a transformer. That includes producers, and consumers of electricity.

You can either build pockets of electricity where you need them or centralize your generation and use transformers to connect things by slightly overlapping transformers.

[TLHeart]

There is a flaw in the way electricity is implemented. You can have 8 energy being produced by a wind turbine, with a transformer powering a building needing 20 energy, if you are producing additional energy elsewhere on the map. The entire grid does not need to be connected.

So you can have energy production --> transformer --> energy user, open space repeat, and total energy production covers all transformers.

[SkiRich]

Originally posted by tenderloveheart:

There is a flaw in the way electricity is implemented. You can have 8 energy being produced by a wind turbine, with a transformer powering a building needing 20 energy, if you are producing additional energy elsewhere on the map. The entire grid does not need to be connected.

So you can have energy production --> transformer --> energy user, open space repeat, and total energy production covers all transformers.

I've asked the devs for some clarity here. Stay tuned.

[nhal]

Ok, I've managed to understand it and am continuing my game.

Message for devs: When placing transformers could power lines be added from each one just to be aesthetic? It makes more sense to me. OR, use metal and wood to construct power lines to make it a bit more interesting/real?

[jbradhicks]

While we're discussing electricity, I really hate that lightning rods' base area is that huge. For one, they look ridiculous, but also, that's a lot of lost square footage. And if I have to put one every where there's an electricity consuming workplace? That's so expensive, both in land use and parts, that it's cheaper to just let the storm hit and repair everything.

In the real world, lightning rods are a building upgrade. But I wouldn't object to them having to be stand-alone structures if, say, they fit on a single 1x1 square. Too late in the game to ask for a redesign of them?

[iceflake_joanna]

Hey all! So clarification on this:

Energy producers (such as the solar panel or the wind turbine) do not need to be within the work area of a transformer to work. They will always produce energy for the entire colony, regardless of where they are.

Energy storages (the battery racks) need to be within the work area to work. Otherwise they are essentially just decorations. When they are inside the work area of a transformer, they will store energy which can then be used whenever necessary.

Transformers need an energy source to be within their work area to work. This energy source can either be an energy producer (solar panel), an energy storage (battery) or the work area of another transformer that has an energy source (this transformer too can have another transformer's work area as its energy source). As long as one transformer in the entire line has either an energy producer or storage close to it, all transformers with connecting work areas will be powered.

Energy consumers (sawmill, bore well, etc) need to inside the work area of a functioning transformer to work. We are working on improving the visualization here as we know this is not easy to see.



So, in your colony, all of your transformers do not need to be connected - you can place transformer 1 in the top right corner and transformer 2 in the bottom left corner - as long as they have an energy source in that work area, they will work. Again, this can either be a battery rack or a solar panel, whichever you wish.

Energy producers will also always provide the energy to these locations, even if they are in the top left corner instead. The energy production from these goes into a colony wide energy pool that is divided by all functioning energy consuming buildings around the colony - this of course means all the energy consumers that are inside the work area of a transformer that has the energy source.


I hope I was able to clarify this a bit, if not, please do let me know! :)

[iceflake_joanna]

Oh and to answer the questions - as I mentioned above, we are working on the visualizations and secondly, not too late to ask for a redesign of the lightning rod though unfortunately unlikely that we will have the chance to do so. I'll forward the feedback regardless, no promises or guarantees though!

[jbradhicks]

Okay, now I am a little confused by your reply, because in paragraph 2 you say, "Energy producers (such as the solar panel or the wind turbine) do not need to be within the work area of a transformer to work," but in the second to last paragraph you say, "The energy production from these goes into a colony wide energy pool that is divided by all functioning energy consuming buildings around the colony - this of course means all the energy consumers that are inside the work area of a transformer that has the energy source."

Do windmills and solar cells have to be inside the transformer grid or not? I had assumed that they do ... but I also thought that about wells and water towers, and only just found out the other day that that's not true.

[jbradhicks]

Oh, and I just had a thought about the lightning rod. The existing model may be fine for protecting power generators, like a whole farm of solar panels or windmills and a couple of battery banks all clustered together. But having to put one next to every power consumer is wildly impractical.

So here's my possible solution: unlocking lightning rods gives you two different buildings. One is the one that we have now. The other is a same-height but much smaller and cheaper 1x1 lightning rod *with a 1-square radius around it* so that it only protects buildings that it's actually touching. Do-able?

[IvantheFormidable]

Originally posted by iceflake_joanna:

snip

That was a really helpful explanation, thank you! I've been trying to wrap my head around how electricity works in the game for a couple of hours, and previously settled on just designing little clusters of buildings around a single transformer and building wind generations nearby to power as much as needed, but this sounds much better!

[iceflake_joanna]

So windmills and solar panels etc, can be anywhere in your colony. They will always produce energy that can be used by anything in your colony - they do not need to be connected to anything to work.

I'll try and put it in another way:

Energy consumers (sawmill, bore well, anything that requires energy to work) needs to be inside the work area of a functioning transformer to work.

Transformers must have an energy source inside their work area to function. This energy source can but doesn't have to be an energy producer. So you can build a wind turbine next to it and the transformer will work. But it doesn't have to be this, it can also be the battery rack (an energy storage) OR the work area of another transformer, that has an energy source.

Battery racks always must be inside the work area of a transformer to work. Otherwise they are just decorations, not doing anything.

And again, as I mentioned above, the energy producers can be placed anywhere at all, they will always work and produce energy.


So for example, let's say you need to power your sawmill. You already have a wind turbine in the bottom left corner, ready and running and producing energy. You place your sawmill in the middle of the colony, next to some nicely wooded area. Then you place a transformer next to it, so that it can be powered.

Now you'll need an energy source for the transformer. Now you can either build another wind turbine here, or you can build a battery rack next to the transformer. Either will work. Or if you just noticed, that you have a functioning transformer pretty close, you can build another transformer in the middle, so that the work areas of the two are both overlapping with the one in the middle - creating a grid. Any one of these will make the transformer function and power your sawmill so that you can get some of those planks you really need :)

Hope this cleared it out even more :)