Power Storage

Experimental

The Power Storage is a mid-game building used for buffering electrical energy. It can store 100MWh, or 100MW for 1 hour. As it has 2 power connectors, multiple Power Storages can be daisy-chained to store large amounts of energy.

1st example: Wasted power capacity ≥ 100 MW 2 Coal Generators generate 2 X 75 MW = 150 MW per second. Let's assume that your factory consumes 40 MW. You are wasting 110 MW, as you use coal and water worth 150 MW while only using 40 MW. Now let's add a single Power Storage to the power grid: It will consume 100 MW and as such will reach maximum charge after 60 minutes at which time the wasted power will again increase from 10 MW to 110 MW. 2nd example: Wasted power capacity < 100 MW 2 Coal Generators generate 2 X 75 MW = 150 MW per second  Let's assume that your factory consumes 100 MW. You are wasting 50MW, as you use coal and water worth 150 MW while only using 100 MW. Now let's add a single Power Storage to the power grid: It will consume 50 MW and as such will reach maximum charge after 120 minutes --> Half the charging speed = double the charging time
 * Maximum storage speed is always 100 MW. As such, it will always take exactly 1 hour of real time to fully charge an empty power storage.
 * Charging speed depends on available "wasted" energy. Since Update 4, all Power generators with a Conveyor Belt input always run at maximum capacity, yielding maximum power output and resource consumption no matter the load.


 * Fluctuating power consumption or generation will charge/discharge the power storage accordingly.


 * Discharge speed - unlike charging speed - is not limited to 100 MW. This means that while charging (with 100 MW) will always take 1 hour, discharging can be much quicker depending on the draw:  Example:   Power production: 1500 MW  Power consumption: 1000 MW  1 Power Storage = 100 MW   Wasted power: 400 MW (you cannot charge a single power storage faster than 100 MW and you would need 4 more (5 in total) to fully use the 500 wasted MW per second. Now let's assume a power failure with the power storage being fully charged after 60 minutes:   Power production: 0 MW  Power consumption: 1000 MW  1 Power Storage = 100 MW/h   Power Storage Discharge rate: 1000 MW  Power Storage is empty after 1000 MW:100 MW = 10 = 60:10 = 6 minutes. You have 6 minutes of time to start generation or you will have run out of power storage. Partially restarting generating capacity will increase the time to blackout as the drain is lower.
 * The limited charging speed of 100 MW per Power Storage building encourages planning ahead. You want to have storage set up before starting up more generation capacity for maximum efficiency and you want to have enough capacity to sustain the power drain in case of failure for sufficient time to fix the problem/reduce consumption for example with Power Switches.

At the side of the building and in the Power UI is the indicator bar showing the proportion of stored energy. It is coloured as follows:


 * Blue when charging
 * Orange when discharging (Also the upper part of the building rises and begins to spin)
 * Grey when doing neither

The UI of the building and the power UI displays time to fully charge/discharge at the current power input/drain.

The Power Storage allows the efficient usage of fluctuating power generation (Geothermal Generator) and consumption (Particle Accelerator and/or a factory not running at peak efficiency)

History

 * Patch 0.4.0.0: Introduced