Power Circuits

This article is intended for beginner players. It will cover the basics of electrical engineering. You may also be interested in the article Get Energy.

The article will be supplemented.

Startup, Manual Generator
Build a Manual generator, run a wire from it to the Research station. As long as there is a duples running in the generator, it will generate 400W. To store this energy, connect a pair of batteries to the mains. The duples will spin the generator until the batteries are charged.

To calculate how many batteries are needed and how long they will last: 60W is consumed by the station, two batteries store 20000W*s, which is enough to run for 330 seconds (20000/60), that is more than 1/2 cycle (the game cycle lasts 600 seconds).

Generator types
There are 8 types of generators in the game. Wood and coal generators are easy to use, you just need to build them and the dupes will bring wood and coal themselves (if you have dug coal or harvested wood). The other generators are more difficult to master. You can read about them in this article.

All generators (except the solar panel) emit heat. If at the beginning of the game you can ignore this, then later you will have to deal with their cooling, using water or oxygen.

Battery Types
There are 3 types of batteries in the game. Their characteristics are given in the table. A smart battery has advantages in lower losses, automation capability, and lower heat dissipation. It's worth using in all circuits.

Typical consumers
The consumption of the most frequently used mechanisms (watts) is given below.

Coal generator, smart battery
The next step is to build a coal generator. It will free the dupes from running in the wheel. Build a generator, a battery and connect them with an automation wire. The battery, once charged, will signal the generator and it will turn off. When the battery is discharged, it will turn on again.

Such a switch-on scheme will avoid wasting coal at times when the power consumption is low or absent at all. The battery settings are shown in the screenshot. Next to the generator is built a Storage bin, which stores a stock of coal. There is a Airflow tile underneath the generator so that the carbon dioxide will not accumulate around it but will escape down the base.

If you have multiple generators, you don't need to put multiple batteries. Just connect them all with one automation wire.

Wire types, overload
There are 4 types of wires in the game, with different maximum loads:

The most commonly used of the wires is the Conductive Wire. It does not spoil the decor like the others and passes through any structures, unlike Heavi-Watt wires. The disadvantages are not a lot of transmitted power and the need for refined metal, which is often in short supply, especially at the beginning of the game.

All the same (power, construction cost, etc.) applies to wire bridges. Wires can be in one of 4 states (shown in the screen): disconnected, normal , maximum power , overload.

Exceeding the power allowance of the wire will cause it to overload.

The screenshot shows a circuit in which 3 generators are connected to equipment with a total power of 1080 W, which is higher than can be transmitted through a normal wire (1000 W). As a result the wire will start to get damaged and eventually break.

To prevent this from happening, you can either replace it with an conductive or heavi-watt wire or split the network into several sub-networks.

Division into subnets, transformer
Connecting simple and powerful wires together is useless, as is amplifying a wire by laying two or more wires together. The laws of conventional electrical engineering do not work here.

Instead, the network is divided into several sub-networks, using transformers. The screen shows such a network consisting of several generators connected with heavi-watt wire, and two sub-networks connected with ordinary wire through transformers.

The current in the transformer always flows from the upper port, to the lower port, and the transformer limits the power of the network to which it is connected by the lower output, at 1 kW. Thus, when the total load on the generators exceeds 1kW, the load in the sub-networks is less and the wires do not burn out.

Reverse transformer connection
It is often necessary to wire from remotely located generators or solar panels. To avoid wasting pure metal on сonductive wires or spoiling the decor with heavi-watt wires, the transformer is reversed.

In this connection, the generators are connected to the input of the transformer, and all the outputs of the transformers are connected in parallel, with one heavi-watt wire.

Remote generators and solar panels are shown conventionally. They can be hundreds of meters away on the map.

Parallel connection of transformers
As a rule for wiring sub-networks use the сonductive wire, designed for 2kW, but in the game there is no transformer for 2kW, but only for 1kW (normal) and 4kW (large transformer).

To prevent overloading of the Conductive wire, a transformer is used in parallel. The power in this network will be limited to 2 kW.

You will also save 200 kg of refined metal (the cost of building a large power transformer).

Reserving
The transformer can be used to isolate critical equipment into a separate subnet. The screenshot conventionally shows: bunker doors, space scanner, solar panel, its batteries and the main grid, with its generators and batteries.

If there is an outage in the generator room (temporarily running out of gas/coal or you start, for example, to rebuild it) and the main batteries run out, some power will be stored in the scanner's batteries.

Bridge, Joint Plate
Bridges are used to lay some wires on top of others without connecting them. In Figure 1 the two wires are connected and refer to the same network, while in Figure 2 the wires cross over without being connected.

The Joint plate are used to make it possible to run the heavi-watt wire through the blocks and doors. The joint plate serves both as a conductor and as a block on which another mechanism can be built. A normal or сonductive wire can pass through the overlay without a connection (Figure 3).

Since bridges and joint plate conduct heat, a scheme of two joint plate with a vacuum (or at least a small amount of carbon dioxide) between them must be used to lead the heavi-watt wire out of the hot room (Fig. 4).

Power Shutoff, Switch
The Power Shutoff is used to disconnect a section of the circuit from the rest of the network. The screenshot shows an example in which the AT (1.2kW load) is switched off by the timer while the dupes are resting so that they can use the Jukebot (960W load). Otherwise, the total load on the wire would be 2.16kW, with the allowable wire load of 2kW.

A switch does the same thing, but it is switched manually by the player.

Engie's Tune-Up
An Engie's tune-up can be applied to the generators. Build a room with generators no smaller than 12 and no larger than 96 cells, with an Power Control Station inside. Batteries can be placed outside.

This room will become the Power plant (orange on the room layer). In the menu of the station it will be left to select the metal from which the dupes, with the skill of electrical engineer, will make microchips. This chip he will apply to the generator, which will give a 50% increase in power for 3 cycles (e.g. from 800W to 1200W).

The Engie's tune-up is not applicable to solar panels.

Energy saving
In addition to the above method of automatically disconnecting the alternator when the battery is charged, there are many others. Only a few of them are listed here.

Smart batteries, have lower losses than the others (mentioned at the beginning of this article). The light sensor (Fig.1.) will turn off the light when there is no dupes nearby (the savings are ridiculous, but still). Filled pipe sensor (fig.2.), will turn off the Electrolyzer or other mechanism, so that there is no overproduction. Similar schemes for disconnection of unnecessary mechanisms can be built on Smart Storage Bin, Liquid and Gas reservoir (Fig.3,4,5).

Power plant for several vents


So as not to put a generator at each vents, and not to pull to them kilometers of сonductive wires, it makes sense to combine the exhaust of several vents in one pipe.

The vents on the diagram are shown conventionally, in reality they can be hundreds of meters away. Proper development of them shown here.

The screenshot shows a conditional example, in which the gas from 2 natural gas vents and 1 hydrogen vents is mixed into one pipe, filtered and consumed by a group of generators located in one place.

This also solves the issue of Engie's Tune-Up - the dupes do not have to run to each generator separately, through the whole map.

For simplicity, the screen does not show the cooling scheme of the hydrogen vent, as well as the necessary gas compressors.

High Power Transmission over Conventional Wires
For transmitting more power than the wires will allow, you can use the circuits below. I didn't come up with it, and I can't tell you who the first author was. The first one is very simple, the second one too :)

The battery is disconnected from the load, connected to the grid, charged from it. And then the cycle repeats.

The circuit can be simplified by removing the right Power shutoff and disconnecting the load (lamps on the screen) with the same automation wire.

The principle of operation is the same, but the voltage does not disappear (rarely it does, but only for 1 game tick = 0.2s, at the moment of switching).

As you can see in the screenshots, in both cases a thin wire, designed for 1kW, transmits a load of more than 2 kW. You have to understand that energy is not multiplied and does not appear out of nowhere. It's just a more convenient way of transmitting it, eliminating the need to run heavi-watt wires all over the map, spoiling the design.

Final View
Here is a very schematic version of the power system that I used at the last base. To simplify perception, it does not have some buildings, and the number of generators, transformers and batteries is less than what is actually needed. Built from memory, something I might have missed.

Pipes
All the gas from all the vent goes through one pipe on the left, filtered (a simple filter is shown here, but I use 2 mechanical ones). The carbon dioxide goes up into space. It can also be fed to Molten Slickster Farm.

Cooling is provided by a radiator tube circuit branching off to the right. Polluted water from the generators drains into the pool, and from there it is pumped out. If desired, the pump can be placed directly under the generators, increasing the height of the "basement".

Do not forget to build gas compressors.

Generators
The generators, transformers and battery are connected by Heavi-Watt Conductive Wire. In fact, there should be more generators, of course.

Excluding other energy sources (such as energy from space, volcanoes, magma, etc.) 7 generators are enough for a large base (if there are enough Vent on the map). That's how many generators will fit in the generator room, if you make it 3 cells high instead of 4.

Consumers
All powerful consumers are schematically located on the bottom floor. In fact, all of them can be located on one or two floors. This approach allows you to get rid of a lot of transformers and tangled wires.

At the top, on the right side, there are 3 transformers, with 3 outgoing wires: to space, to base, and to crude oil. There aren't really that many transformers, but you can easily build as many as you need. To do this, when building, allow space on top of this circuit.

The left side shows 3 transformers from other energy sources. This could be e.g. a Sour gas boiler, regolith smelting, etc.

Decor and other


The cooling pipe is routed under the ceiling to have less effect on the decor. The floor tiles and heavi-watt conductive wire are made of gold. If there is no gold volcano on the map or not enough gold, I build pedestals between the generators, on which I place artifacts from the space.

It is not superfluous to build ceiling lights, which would dupes spend a little less time making and applying chips.

To the left goes the wire to the vent pumps.

The automation is simple and is shown in the screenshot.

Summary
This option allows you to concentrate the entire power system of your base in one place. It's easy to expand and easy to maintain. Your dupes don't have to run all over your base to tune-up your generators.

Unlike the classic variant - find a vent, master it, put a generator nearby - this scheme gets rid of the situation where one vent has gone into hibernation and its generators give nothing, while the generators of the other vent are trying to provide the whole base with energy.

Additionally, it saves refined metal that would have gone to run conductive wire to each vent and it doesn't ruin the decor if you run heavi-watt wire. And there is plenty of sandstone, granite, etc. on any map.

The riddle: which lamp will Trovaldo light?


Answer: Middle