Power Storage

Experimental

The Power Storage is a mid-game building used for buffering electrical energy. Each can store up to 100 MWh, or 100 MW for 1 hour. As it allows 2 power connections, multiple Power Storages can be daisy-chained to store large amounts of energy.
 * Maximum charging rate is 100 MW. As such, it will take at least an hour in real-time to fully charge an empty Power Storage.
 * If the excess power in the power grid is less than 100 MW, it could take proportionally longer time to charge up. If spare power is 75MW (3/4 of the 100MW max charge rate), the Power Storage will require 4/3 hours (1:20) to fully charge.
 * Power Storage units that are not fully charged will split the spare power, reducing their charge rate to the available spare power divided by the number of partially charged Power Storage units.
 * As long as there is stored energy in the Power Storage and there is a power shortage, the Power Storage starts to discharge. There is no limit on the discharge speed; the discharge rate will exactly match the power deficiency. This allows the engineer to quickly react to restore the power situation, whether to increase power production or to install a Power Switch. Once all the stored energy has been discharged and the power is still insufficient, the power grid will trip.
 * Charging Power Storage does not add to the grid power consumption or max consumption figures, nor does it diminish capacity since it will slow or stop charging if there are other demands for the available power.
 * The charge in Power Storage is preserved when disconnected
 * There are two meters in the Power Storage interface. The left meter is the individual Power Storage charge level.  The right meter is the collective charge level of all Power Storage attached to the grid.
 * Connecting additional Power Storage will not impact the individual charge level of other Power Storage units, but will reduce the charge level of the system on the right meter. This will also increase the time remaining until full charge.

Indicator
At the side of the building and in its UI is the indicator bar showing the proportion of stored energy. It is colored as follows: The UI of the building and the Power UI displays time to fully charge/discharge at the current power input/drain.
 * Blue - charging
 * Orange - discharging (The upper part of the building rises and begins to spin)
 * Grey - idle

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

Building ratio
As a rule of thumb, measure the power production (in GW) then multiply that number by 5. Example: This is based on the fact that both Geo Thermal Generator and Particle Accelerator have power fluctuating about 50% around their median value.
 * If power production capacity is 5 GW, then build 25 Power Storages.
 * If power production is 1 TW (1000 GW), then build 5000 Power Storages.

Power can fluctuate up to 50 % of the average value. Assuming the worst case scenario, the power production is solely from Geo Thermal Generators and all the production buildings are only Particle Accelerators. If power production is 5 GW, half of it is 2.5 GW (maximum fluctuate valve). That is the maximum excess power. To avoid this going to waste, capture all the excess power with Power Storages. As each of them can only charged up to maximum rate of 100 MW, 2.5 GW of excess would require: That is, 25 Power storages at most.
 * Math:
 * 2.5 GW = 2500 MW
 * 2500 MW / 100 MW = 25

History

 * Patch 0.4.0.0: Introduced