Coal power plant - Supply chain problems

[MinenSpecht]

I just started playing so please be gentle :)

I tried setting up coal production for power in the beginning. Tried it 7 times now and it does not work as I want it to work.

The setup is this:
coal mine -> storage -> coal processing -> storage -> power plant

The idea is to compensate for workers changing shifts and make the power plant and coal processing have a passive buffer in resources. Also this way you can set this all up in a square with a bus station in the middle.

It works well but the last storage is not delivering coal to the power plant. I set up the conveyor belts correctly (even visually theres a conveor in a heap of coal leading to the power plant) but there is no coal delivered. If I use 2 trucks instead it works.

Any ideas what I could have done wrong?

[ryantheskinny]

So one thing to remember is plants and factories pull, as needed from storage. So the powerplant should be pulling resources as needed.
Conveyor engines and oil pumps push resources forward. So if you want the coal to push to the power plant you will need a conveyor engine in-between it to do so.
If I remember correctly the coal processing plant should push coal, when it's storage is full, to the storage.

[zytukin]

Power plant has 2 conveyor inputs, try connecting it to the other one.
Think I had the same problem.

[TheAmishStig]

Originally posted by ryantheskinny:

If I remember correctly the coal processing plant should push coal, when it's storage is full, to the storage.

It's more complicated than that, but it's a level of detail we don't need here. The important part for MinenSpecht's question is that the production chain won't shut down if the Processor fills up.

As to the larger question: Ryantheskinny is dead on. Make your chain the following:

coal mine -> storage -> coal processor -> storage -> conveyor engine -> power plant, and it'll keep th epower plant topped up.

One danger: If you connect some sort of non-factory building to the conveyor engine too, then things get wonky and your power plant may end up starved. Best to connect them to the storage area instead, or give them a separate chain entirely (at least for the time being).

[rkelly17]

You might check to make sure that every part of your chain has power. I build the chain from coal mine to power plant just as you do and try to power it up from imported power (at the beginning to get it going) but I find that I have to go back and check every link to make sure that each part is powered. If even one conveyor engine is unpowered it will stop the whole chain.

[MinenSpecht]

So there is a difference betwenn push and pull. Pull need a conveyor engine. Thank you for the advice!

[ryantheskinny]

Originally posted by MinenSpecht:

So there is a difference betwenn push and pull. Pull need a conveyor engine. Thank you for the advice!

Yes. Except Factories pull from the connected storage, conveyors push it forward to the next building in line

[Jo2]

I had situalion like that with steel mill iron mine > storage> iron process> storage> storage >steel mill. All storages 100% full , steel mill not working bc no iron so puted conveyor engine beetween second last and last storage everything works fine now