A Build for JoshLittle

[-root]

I pinched this build from the wiki and decided to do it in dedication to Joshlittle and his fascination with solar planels.

Turning your steam generators into an emergency backup supply

[darkminaz]

you didn't exactly say how it would start the whole system when you don't have power.
sure that box has 0 wood then, but how would that start the system? or am i missing something

but ive learned that you can create 2 power networks, didn't know that actually works. So thanks for that part.

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Those green inserters are wired to work only when there is 0 wood in the box.

So when there is 0 wood, they will start to put fuel into the boilers.

[darkminaz]

ah .. that would never work for me since i use wood for my trains and i got like 20k of that shit left^^
hmm gotta find something that i only have a few of then.
e: so you also can't use a warm water tank system with it. hmm (i like to store resources in case of emergency)

[JoshLittle]

So thank you for this episode. But I didn't really understand what this has to do with me.

Funnily I actually was driven into full solar support because I was to dump to set up this scenario from the wiki right (like what gives power to the inserters if the power is gone) and so I thought: Oh shitty boilers, I just build more solar panels and accumulators and cancel the steam-network completely. And they were never needed again. Some days ago I said I will build a steam enginge park just for fun. Yeah, I built 10 times a double standard set (= 200 engines and 280 boilers) - what was not funny - and this grid only went on for under a minute in realtime just to fill the accumulators back up which would only drain under 10% even if the steam engines don't exist. But even then my accumulators had to help out because the steam enginges were to weak. So I would have to at least double it and my spontanious setup of coal support wasn't even able to support this one grid (splitting one belt into 10 looks terrible) and so I decided to stay with solar power. The rest of it can be seen on the west of my base ( https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=8&t=5323 ). Perhaps I can convince the biters to pay for a visit of my open-air museum

So these charts on a daycicle are very familiar to me. You simply showed how a solar based factory works with the draining and recharging of the accumulators. The main part wasn't shown from you: What happens if the capacity goes to zero? What powers the smart inserters if there is not enough power to power the fast inserter? So perhaps you repeat the test with only 100-200 accumulators so there will be a start of the engines and a bit to do for them.

[micomico]

I use a little variant of the wiki mechanism. It only uses two inserters and the logic in the smart inserters is reversed. There are 5 wood pieces going around in the little circuit. The smart inserters by the boilers only work when there are more than 3 wood in the smart chest. The blue tinted area is the area the single electric pole covers.

The number of lamps, size of the belt and number of wood pieces can be modified to change the time at which the steam engines start. More lamps or wood pieces increase the amount of energy available in the main accumulators when the steam engines start. Less of these items or a bigger path, make the engine start later, leaving less energy on the accumulators.

What happens if the capacity goes to zero? What powers the smart inserters if there is not enough power to power the fast inserter?

As the little single accumulator has to feed both the main electric network and this little network, if it depletes at night, it will always deplete before than the main accumulators. This will trigger the condition and the inserters by the boiler will work with the power that remains on the main network.

[-root]

ah .. that would never work for me since i use wood for my trains and i got like 20k of that shit left^^
hmm gotta find something that i only have a few of then.
e: so you also can't use a warm water tank system with it. hmm (i like to store resources in case of emergency)

It doesn't matter about the total of a resource, only the amount of resources in that one box. I have tons of wood as well, but because there is only half a dozen on the little conveyor belt system.

So thank you for this episode. But I didn't really understand what this has to do with me.

Means you can kick over to pure solar much, much sooner than you normally would. Also means that you can have an emergency backup if things go wrong.

You simply showed how a solar based factory works with the draining and recharging of the accumulators. The main part wasn't shown from you: What happens if the capacity goes to zero? What powers the smart inserters if there is not enough power to power the fast inserter? So perhaps you repeat the test with only 100-200 accumulators so there will be a start of the engines and a bit to do for them.

That part is quite difficult to show, as it would require knocking out approximately 1k accumulators.

What happens when capacity goes to zero is that the inserter stops working and stops putting wood in the smart chest and that triggers the smart inserters on the boilers.

There will always be enough to power the fast inserter as when the accumulators hit zero, there is still a little residual charge in the system which is enough to move things very slowly. Its enough to trigger the emergency backup (which is the entire point) and give you another (in my case 40mw) little boost to get you out of trouble. Without this system, zero is zero and you are completely out of power.

I'll try and do another video and explain things a bit better. I did miss a couple of key points.

[JoshLittle]

I tried it within my first 1-3 hours (don't know exactly) of factorio and failed to implement it. Ironicly if it would have worked, I would not have implemented solar this fast. If I would install it in the game of a new map then I would still have only the one picture in the wiki or your video which is more or less the same. I have more expirience now but who knows if I am not still too dump for it And trying it on the current map would only have sense if I rip down >10k of accumulators. After the heavily use of efficency modules they could support the whole base, but it would still be a pain. Even with my only-solar and only-accus blueprints. Perhaps I do it - if I could manage to separate the outer defense ring and give it an accumulatorbank and some solarpanels.

[darkminaz]

ah now i see, you use the red wire. Sometimes i'm just to blind
well sadly it still woudn't work for my setup since i store hot water. I kinda thought i could create a on off switch somehow that would use my stored water somehow only when i need it.
might be something they add in a future patch

[-root]

ah now i see, you use the red wire. Sometimes i'm just to blind
well sadly it still woudn't work for my setup since i store hot water. I kinda thought i could create a on off switch somehow that would use my stored water somehow only when i need it.
might be something they add in a future patch

I've had a thought. Let me play around with something and make a vid.

[darkminaz]

create a pump and set that to a internal logic. <-- that way you can store huge amounts of hot water in case you need to run the system. Atleast in theory it could work. Since pumps don't work without energy.
But i can't realy test it out right now since my base produces way to mutch energy to ever run out.
and i kinda did kick all my remaining savegames :/

edit: hmm problem is it pumps to mutch water in and it takes a long time to shut down again hmm
e2: nope doesn't work since for some reasons the pumps still let water through even if they are not powered (not a lot but still a tiny bit)
e3: ok .. it does work .. just had a bug in there
e3: i currently got a way to start it in case my power goes out, but no way to stop it .. hmm



my current idea
as soon the power stops, the coal will reach the boiler (powerd by a coal inserter)
that will start the pumps -> power starts working -> goes into a energy accumulator -> goes back to the main grid
the problem is .. how to stop it currently.
the left pipe is to empty the water out of the machines as soon as the water input would stop, but i currently can't find a way to stop them.

after playing around a bit more .. it now works as an LAST RESORT emergency starter.
if anyone finds a way to stop it at some point (for example "if energy accumulator is over 5gj stop) or something .. would be nice^^

[darkminaz]

beeing stubborn wins the day .. kinda ^^


so here is the plan
no power = blue inserter stops -> coal reaches the burner -> power gets created for the pump -> water starts running
as soon as the power is back on -> blue works again -> no coal reaches the burner = power slowly runs out -> pumps stop working -> system shuts down

the green inserter + green wire, checks if there is less then 1 coal left in the box. IF there is less -> it starts working and adds 1(or 4 with the box inserter research) coal

Important:make sure the pumps are only connected to the starting steam engine and nothing else

For less pollution:
- create a pump system to get the water out again fast

For a faster stop:
place a radar down on that unconected part -> will drain the remaining power out quite fast

[-root]

Oh bravo! Very well done!!!

Just so you know, this was my exact thought except I didn't know if would work or not and i didn't want to seem stupid saying something before I had a chance to try it.

[darkminaz]

Great minds think alike .. or something like that.

It allways botherd me that the pumps are useless, so the instant i had this idea i was like "try it with the pumps".
If you have around 30-50 tanks and 50+ maschines it works quite well as a backup. I just used a savegame to try it (block 90% of my solar pannels by deleting the wires) so my power would go out.

and you don't have to worry about a slow start since it's an instant fill of 99 temp water. + with a water pump that runs back (also on the main grid) it stops the whole thing within 20seconds.


i later create a nicer version of it with a legend unless i find a post like that somewhere in the forums allready^^

[JoshLittle]

Just for interest: If the heating and the using of the water/steam is separated into two actions, is there any advantage regarding to pollution?

(And btw: This planet in the factorio-universe is a dream for solving energie problems. Especially the lossless storage of electrical energie and heated water would be a bestseller on earth )

[-root]

Emergency Steam Generator Revisted

As requested, I've revisted the steam generator and managed to force it to trigger.

Hopefully this makes more sense!

[JoshLittle]

I couldn't really explain why it works, so probably I didn't understood it good enough. And maybe your test cut is my barrier of thinking.
If the steam engines load the same wires that fills the accumulator back up isn't there an alternation cycle with a frequenz of how long the boiler take to burn 5 items? Because after the steam engines work on full load, there is an overproduction that loads the one accumulator that leads the box to be filled again? And what exact power the inserters for the fuel are using when the last power is used?

In your first try it works not as I would think it wouldn't. Because everything has no power including all inserters.
In your second try it seems to work BUT as you can see in 4:32 the network with the steam engines has back its 1.5k accumulators with 7.3GJ. That the inserters have enough power with that is no wonder. But isn't it the sense of the system to let it work when everywhere is no power left?

So in this sense: Isn't the single accumulator leading to a situation where the inserter to fill the box runs out of power at last instead of first?

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So in this sense: Isn't the single accumulator leading to a situation where the inserter to fill the box runs out of power at last instead of first?

Yes. That is exactly how it is supposed to be as this build is an "emergency" power backup.

If the steam engines load the same wires that fills the accumulator back up isn't there an alternation cycle with a frequenz of how long the boiler take to burn 5 items?

The backup is only aimed at throwing an extra however megawatts at the problem to get through a big time of load. There won't be an alternation cycle as you say because in a real network there are however many solar panels and accumulators sitting around that will become the primary power source again when the massive load goes away.

Because after the steam engines work on full load, there is an overproduction that loads the one accumulator that leads the box to be filled again?

Exactly. Once you have overproduction of power, you no longer need the steam engines. THat is to say, you have passed the emergency and no longer need them.

And what exact power the inserters for the fuel are using when the last power is used

There should be enough residual power in the network to run the inserters. At least a little. If the spike hits in the middle of the night, you're screwed no matter what way you look at it.

In your first try it works not as I would think it wouldn't. Because everything has no power including all inserters.
In your second try it seems to work BUT as you can see in 4:32 the network with the steam engines has back its 1.5k accumulators with 7.3GJ. That the inserters have enough power with that is no wonder. But isn't it the sense of the system to let it work when everywhere is no power left?

I understand what you are saying and there should be enough residual power in the network to run the inserters.

So in this sense: Isn't the single accumulator leading to a situation where the inserter to fill the box runs out of power at last instead of first?

Exactly! This is emergency power so of course it needs to come on last!