How to make steam engines go off when not needed?

[Mango]

I have a big (in my eyes) solar powerplant with acumulators to survive the night. I have also some steam engines (3) to be safe when expanding my factory.

The problem is that every morning those steam engines go on 100% production but I don't want them to do so as I have enough solar panels to feed the acumulators. Is there any way how to turn them off untill they are really needed? Like the demand of electricity is higher than panels can generate?

[n9103]

https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... ?f=8&t=976

[Psycho0124]

https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... ?f=8&t=976
Neat little trick made by Ssilk to do exactly this ^

It uses an accumulator which sits in two electric networks (one is your main grid, the other is only an inserter and maybe some lights).
Because it's in both, it draws down faster than your other accumulators. The stranded accu powers an inserter arm which feeds a smart chest (a continuious looping flow of items). When the accu empties, the chest is emptied and triggers the steam engines to cycle on (hopefully just before your main bank of accumulators empties out). Adding lights to the stranded accu makes it cycle steam on earlier. Adding more items to the loop makes it cycle on later.
Here's my setup. I like wiring the boilers inserters up directly to reduce lag time in the off-cycle but it's expensive and not necessary.

The stranded accu is up in the top-left along with the looping stone bricks and trigger smart chest.
Smart inserters are programmed to run if the chest has < 1 stone brick.

Edit: Lol.. Ya beat me to it n9103.

[ssilk]

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

Btw the wiki is going to be more and more useful, I recommend a view.

[BurnHard]

The presented solution is quite clever, by myself I am strongy still hoping they add an ingame-electric option für operation modes, as I see this solution only as a "workourond"

eg. Steam engines only working if Accumulators are completely empty and electric demand (without recharging accumulators) is higher than actual solar energy production. I like the idea of some "spare" steam engines for times of extreme power consumption, but I really don't like the way it works now (steam engine 100% load to recharge accumulators at the beginning of the day, and then the solar collectors only work at 20% for 4/5 of the day because the accumulators are already full because of the steam engines)

[ssilk]

When accumulators are completely empty you have a problem: what powers the inserters for the boilers? Happens to me some times and it's really no fun to have this happen in the middle of the night. In other words: You cannot wait till till the accus completely empty, you need some kind of reserve.

Edit: pro-tip: I shortly begun to leave one boiler always running, because I found, that this enables the steam engine to power up a bit faster, because they consume much more water, so when powering up, the cold water (only 18-20 degrees) is replaced faster with hot. But I haven't measured, if this is really true.

BTW: my first attempt to switch my steam engines off was, that I made an extra steam-engine, which powered the inserters in the case, that everything goes down.

And my tip to "sparing for extreme situations": if you have the idea to fight with laser towers and you begin to place 70 or more and all the biters came from a "triple city" then the stored energy is gone within seconds. Happened to me. I needed 2 full lines (each 24 burners, 20 steam engines) to feed the lasers, even if I had about 600 accus and solar cells at that time. But in this epic fight the whole stuff didn't come till midnight, even if it was normally 50% full in the morning.

And yes, I want to have "switches" (transformer stations) which would make it much easier to have intelligent power management, but that has already been discussed many times and I'm sure they will come some times (next year?).

And I would like, that the accus have a "loading curve". E. g. the last 10% take the same time as the first 90% etc. This would make it for example useful to have not all accus in one network, but switching them on off, depending on real needs. More or less like in reality. The problem is the control of all this stuff and it is a quite complicated task to create controllers, which have both: easy handling, but the flexibility for using them in a total different manner, than planned.

[wrtlprnft]

When accumulators are completely empty you have a problem: what powers the inserters for the boilers? Happens to me some times and it's really no fun to have this happen in the middle of the night. In other words: You cannot wait till till the accus completely empty, you need some kind of reserve.

Well, if there was a way to make the engines shut off voluntarily when they're not needed, the boilers could always be fuelled.

[ssilk]

Thought a lot about but really no chance without an element like a switch. And currently only inserters are switchable.

And implementation wouldn't be so easy as with the inserters (not nearly), because depending how this is used, this switch works like a divider between two electric networks or does nothing, because another wire or another switch connects the networks. And for every change of any switch in all networks this can change. That was the point where I saw, that currently something with the networks should be changed; but what?

[wrtlprnft]

How about some kind of smart valve you can put between your boilers and your engines? That might even have other uses when other liquids (oil, sewage…) are introduced :-)

[kovarex]

How about some kind of smart valve you can put between your boilers and your engines? That might even have other uses when other liquids (oil, sewage…) are introduced

I like this idea.

Lets summarize, what I believe should be added to the circuit network:

• Smart valve
• Configurable substation, so it doesn't transmit electricity when certain condition is not fulfilled
• Some kind of light indicator (colored lamp that is configured to work only under certain condition? Or even configure different condition for different colors of one lamp?)
• Switch (sends predefined signal(s) when turned on manually
• Automatic switch (under certain condition(s) it will emit specified signal), ideally it would have input and output which could be separate networks.
• Few different signals than the items (customs like light, ON/OFF entities (like enemy units), etc.)
• Light detector that sends the light signal.
• Train station emitting the count of items of the train in the station.
• Train signal connectable to network, will be never green when the signal is not fulfilled.
• Transport belt signaling machine, would emit the items on the transport belt to the network.
• Enemy radar (Maybe use common radar for that?) Will emit signal of enemy units in the radius.
• Add logistic condition to the inserter.
• Logistic emitter (emits supplies in the logistic network to the circuit network)

[ssilk]

Edit: moved into next post to avoid double quoting.

[ssilk]

Cannot sleep, so I made an update and deleted the previous (which is included here now). Sorry, but this post has started fantasies.

• Smart valve

Temperature. Fluid/gas/liquid (too few pumps?). Pressure?

• Configurable substation, so it doesn't transmit electricity when certain condition is not fulfilled
• Some kind of light indicator (colored lamp that is configured to work only under certain condition? Or even configure different condition for different colors of one lamp?)

I mean the steampunk scenario tells clearly that every lamp has an own color. What's possible is an ample light: red, green in one device or even more/different colors. But I think an LED color light is off topic. Ah yes, very optional also different blinking rhythms, that could work fine and gives more movement.

• Switch (sends predefined signal(s) when turned on manually
• Automatic switch (under certain condition(s) it will emit specified signal), ideally it would have input and output which could be separate networks.
• Few different signals than the items (customs like light, ON/OFF entities (like enemy units), etc.)

The current accu capacity in percent (per network of course). Nice2have current power consumption/production in percent (could be more than 100). Very optional also all other values in electrical/production info. I think for switching off something if e.g. too much research.

• Light detector that sends the light signal.
• Train station emitting the count of items of the train in the station.

And if there is any. Well, then there must be coal in it, but what if I loaded it with wood? eventually the number of wagons and number of locomotives could be useful (switching signals if train can go two directions, don't put the coal out from loco, if short train)

• Train signal connectable to network, will be never green when the signal is not fulfilled.

Switches also? In DTTD you could have trains, which just stopped at every station they are coming to. With that you could bring the items to the currently most needed train station.

• Transport belt signaling machine, would emit the items on the transport belt to the network.
• Enemy radar (Maybe use common radar for that?) Will emit signal of enemy units in the radius.
• Add logistic condition to the inserter.
• Logistic emitter (emits supplies in the logistic network to the circuit network)

• Timer switch. Like a switch (or advanced version or config option) but goes back to previous state after configurable time. From one tick up to some minutes (one day?)
  (Many uses. Simplest: press button to stop the trains for 10 seconds, so that I can walk over the tracks. Or "when full keep stuff running for a minute to empty all belts, then switch the whole assembly street off".
• Infrared Sensor. Any biome/player etc.
• Player sensor. E. g. going near rails, switches on timer switch, which switches signals to red which let me pass but not the biters.

[FreeER]

[Awesome Stuff was here]

Cannot sleep[snip]

I like! +9.0...but little of that belongs in a topic called "How to make steam engines go off when not needed?"

[ssilk]

...but little of that belongs in a topic called "How to make steam engines go off when not needed?"

Well, you're so right, but this kind of discussion leads to the best ideas.

And cause I still can't sleep.

• rail signals can provide their block statuses
• acoustic indicator (horn, siren) could be very useful and bring a completely new gameplay with tuned instruments e.g. https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... ?f=6&t=921
• radar could emit the repairs needed (produce not more repair kits than needed)
• a train could have a line number, which is emitted by station/signal. Every train, which has the same program gets the same line-number. Enables different routing based on routes.

Surely there are more, but I feel, this gets more and more unimportant.