Problems with the electricity substation and voltage

[Phobos]

I hope the pictures help to understand.
It's about this town (11k population)
I have several substations in the city and some of them are having voltage problems. All are under 100% so not overloaded.
The 3 transformers have enough voltage.
The coal-fired power plant still has enough power.
Coal and workers are always enough.
All the power lines I've checked are green.
Is it maybe because of the underground lines in the city?
I've checked everything and I don't know what to do next.

The main transformer can be seen in the last picture. It is connected to a 13 MW cable under the water.

If I don't get enough electricity on the island, then the transformers would go crazy, wouldn't they?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2925619090
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2925619047
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2925619024
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2925619009
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2925618996
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2925618976

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2925623600
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2925623572

[Stele]

Voltage drops in HV grid suggest not enough juce. It's hard to imagine geometry and node connections from few screenshots. Maybe draw it as a graph with line capacities. Then probably you'd able to find faulty place yourself. Also have you checked vattage overlay? If it's too thin cable nomewhere, it's gonna show up there. All screens are in voltage mode.

[Silent_Shadow]

Most of your stuff is stuck at 88 kV, which indicates that the power available to them is throttled; this only happens when the supplied power is between 50% and 100% of the power required by the loads. Since your coal power plant is not fully loaded, you probably have a bottleneck somewhere closer to the power source(s).

I would guess that you have routed more than 19 MW through a switch (19 MW is the transmission limit per switch) and thus are not getting it, or that the power lines from the coal power plant are rated for too low a wattage.

If you have connected any other power sources to the coal power plant (even just a small windmill), then you might be experiencing issues due to how the game assigns loading.

[MrKrabs]

Well, I don´t have any solution for U yet.
However I would like to highlight the issues I had recently.
On the following screenshot please fokus on the minimap, particullar the spot where are the bridges over the river.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2913778113

In that square I built two subsea cables under the river which I merched back together at the other side. So there were 18 MV available.
That worked out fine.
The energy is coming from the town on the upper left solely.
Before this town on the screenshot became live I built the
"run the river" Powerplant.
As soon as I attached this powerplant to the grid the whole town
wanted to get it´s power from here, causing the ( run the river ) powerplant running beyond it´s capacities, which resulted in flickering.
As soon as I seperated them it was all fine.

Anyway, my example has two different sources of power since you got one only.
My suggestions would be as follows:

- Attach a second underground cable.
- Make sure you won´t exceed the magical number of 19 with any structures between the power source and the substation. ( Did you count them? )

I hope that helps a little.

[MrKrabs]

Silent_Shadow´s comment makes ring a bell here.
I have a windmill at another spot on the map.
That windmill was connected to my grid as well, gave me headache through a few game years. One small village wanted to have all it´s power from that windmill.
After cutting the line let that village depend on a reliable source my problems were over.

[Phobos]

have I understood that correctly? So you can't connect 2 power sources, for example a coal-fired power plant and a solar power plant, to a switch?

I'll check later after work, but I think I'm pretty sure there's only one coal-fired power plant connected to the island.

i have about 6-7 switches between the power station and the city. Is that too much? is there a certain length or number how many you can connect to a power source before performance drops?

none of the switches consumes more than 19 MW. The coal-fired power plant currently consumes between 12 - 15 MW

[Silent_Shadow]

You can connect multiple power sources to a grid, but depending on how you connect them, it will result in different behaviors occurring, most of which are bad unless you know how to use them.

You can have up to 19 nodes (switches/transformers) in a load's path; more will result in power not being transmitted (the 19th node can be a substation or trafo though). Performance shouldn't really drop any for that. The internal electrical junction yards of power plants will also not allow other power sources to transmit power through them.

You can check out my guide for more info on all the restrictions and mechanics of the grid:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2827443475


Try checking the wattage (not voltage) overlay for red cables, these may be the bottleneck.

If you have water and sewage enabled, then ensure your power plant gets clean drinking water or its production capacity will be halved.

[Phobos]

One thing I still don't understand is the substation.
Do I always have to look at the lower % so that it doesn't exceed 100%?
When I connect an underground line to a substation, I must pay attention to the % or that it does not exceed 1.45MW?

[MrKrabs]

As far as I understood:
- There is a substation.
- The game recognizes the amount of buildings in reach.
- The game does not recognize if there are more substations supporting buildings in it´s own reach.

I might be wrong with my upper statements, so don´t judge me on that.
Also it is hard to determine if the coverage of the chosen setup is good enough whatsoever.
Some buildings suck a lot of electricity when they are active.
Harbors for instance can be a pain.
Everything looks nice and dandy unless a ship is comming to load or unload stuff.
I´m not an expert on that topic. But me personally I don´t look to much to the percentage.
I rather watch that I don´t exeed what the power line is giving me.
Therefor I often look at the "meter" at the substation.
If that thing is coming to it´s upper third I start to get a little nervious and begin to consider countermeasures.
I guess I should go through that Guide from Silent_Shadow sooner or later.
Rather sooner.

[Phobos]

I found the mistake, I connected an 18MW cable from the coal plant to a switch and then I went ahead with a 13MW cable and connected more things to it plus my city on the island.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2925928310

Thanks guys for your help and tips and your guide is really very very good.

[Silent_Shadow]

Substations will sum the maximum loading of all buildings within range and divide it by 2.5 MW to get the first percentage; which is just a measure of how much power it alone might need to provide if all the buildings were at maximum power, as a percentage of the substation's rating of 2.5 MW.

The second percentage is the maximum amount of loading that the substation expects to supply when sharing loads with other nearby substations or power sources, as a percentage of its 2.5 MW rating.

These percentages are just tools for seeing if you might need more substations in the area, but they do not account for the wattage rating of the power line/cable connected to them nor does it consider the typical power use. You can convert the percentage to your substation's actual power supply limit (its power line/cable wattage rating) by multiplying it by 2.5 MW and dividing it by the wattage rating in MW for the power line/cable you connected to the substation.

You should really only be concerned when the substation's power reading starts getting close to its power line/cable's wattage rating. Exceeding either percentage is usually fine because typically most buildings, especially residential and service buildings, do not use anywhere near their maximum power. Industrial buildings and un/loading facilities are the only buildings that typically do see their maximum power usage, which makes the substation's percentages more useful.

[Silent_Shadow]

Glad it worked out.

I forgot to mention that the wattage overlay will only highlight power lines when the game is running at normal speed or faster. You can use this feature to see the overloaded power lines which will be highlighted in red.

[MrKrabs]

@Silent_Shadow:
As I went through your Guide, there you mentioned something about a maximum length of power lines or maximum number of poles.
Could you describe that closer for a never had any trouble with long lines in the past.

[MrKrabs]

Ah... here, just found it.

"Cables can travel across any length of water while power lines are quite limited due to their tower interval limit."

This tower interval limit... what is that?

[3division]

Originally posted by Phobos:

have I understood that correctly? So you can't connect 2 power sources, for example a coal-fired power plant and a solar power plant, to a switch?

You can but you not get guaranteed that this solar power plant will be used when it could be used. (most probably coal will runs and solar will not runs)
But workaround if you will connect coal power plant.. and solar power plant.. and you will connect them to single switch.. (but both coal and solar must be connected to same switch and no other switches in between - only then it will works that way that coal will only make energy when not enough from solar)

This workaround not works for the wind,, because you need transformer from many wind power plants..

Good news that future update 0.8.9.X will contains a special switch with priorities... so this will be no longer issue.. it should be possible then also setups.. with import/export electricity.. that you will purchase only electricity you need (if any needed).. same you will able to export only when you have more electricity in power grid than you need... this feature not yet finished.. but seems it should works for now (due to complicated electricity system was had to implement)

[Silent_Shadow]

Originally posted by MrKrabs:

This tower interval limit... what is that?

So when you build power lines, the lines themselves will droop down some distance before going up to the next tower. If you build power lines over roads or water, some towers will not be built and the lines will have to stretch over a longer distance to the next tower and thus droop even lower.

Eventually you will reach a point where the lines touch the ground or water and the game will prevent the power line from being built with the warning: "Distance between poles too far."