Implement power management capabilities.

[Molay]

Hello everyone,

I'd like to suggest implementing a way to handle power generation.
I'm not a fan of all my power plants starting to burn trough the fuel when I have ample supplies of power in accumulators to last me for the night. So here I am.

Possibilities:
1) Rework the window when you click on a power pole in a way that you can set various parameters. That is:
- % level of accumulator energy reached before starting the power plants (i.e. accumulators drop < 20%, start power plants).
- While nighttime, capability to set power plants to produce at x% efficiency (i.e. during night, all power plants come online at 30% efficiency, rest is provided by batteries).
Although the first option is technically enough, I believe we love this game most for the amount of options it offers, thus having the second, somewhat redundant (not really if you only have few power plants) is very appreciated.

2) Implement a new Power Management Control Station in the piping of power plants. So, basically a pipe with options. Options should be the two mentioned in point (1).

3) Implement point (1). Implement a new Smart Power Module that can be crafted and inserted into power plants. If the module is present, the power plant will act according to the settings. Otherwise, it defaults to normal behavior.

All of those options rely on solar power (or other free power - wind? water? who knows what times brings) and accumulators to be present in order to make sense.
It would allow one to go a bit more "green" again, keep pollution down a little more, and biters a little smaller while preserving resources!

Thanks for reading. Any ideas are welcome.
Molay

[Schmendrick]

Changing the power priorities to numbers instead of text categories would probably help with this.

[ssilk]

I'm not a fan of all my power plants starting to burn trough the fuel when I have ample supplies of power in accumulators to last me for the night.

https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... ailable.3F

The Tab was already open from the last one, who needed that.

Sometimes I ask me, how requests like those can be canalized to the hundreds of already existing posts and half a dozens of threads before posting it...

[Schmendrick]

That is *a* solution, but it is imperfect (delay) and clumsy. (Not in the sense that its design is bad, but it is a hack at a concern that is common enough that it is worth addressing within the game, especially since it has a relatively simple implementation there.)

[ssilk]

Yes, and if you read it completely it tells you, that it will be changed.

[Schmendrick]

Wow, how long has that sentence been there? I'd never noticed it before.

Is there any official word regarding this?

[ssilk]

Wow, how long has that sentence been there? I'd never noticed it before.

The wiki has a history function.

Is there any official word regarding this?

Yes. And it is part of the roadmap to enhance the circuits.
I'm sure you'll find it.