Power production

How to switch off steam engines in the night, when enough accumulator capacity is available?

At some point, when you have enough Solar panels and Accumulators you may use the steam-engines only as silent power-reserve, for example at the end of the night after a long fight. This is normally not possible, because steam-engines have a higher priority than accumulators; accus are only unloaded, if nothing else delivers. Or in other words, when the sun goes down, the steam engines turn on to save the accu-power.

But you can trick around this:

The accu (hovered) is loaded from the main network. The accu-powered-network unloads this accu to power the fast inserter. If the accu is empty, the fast inserter doesn't work anymore, but the basic inserter remains working, because he is powered by the main network. He unloads the remaining wood from the chest. The chest gets empty and the smart inserter begins to work, filling up coal into the boiler (for simpleness we reduced it to only one boiler/steam engine, normally much more is needed to make sense!).

Basically this works, because the accumulator in this picture unloads a bit faster, than the accus in the main network, because he stays in two networks and so a bit more power is needed.

You can trim the accu powered network exactly to your needs by adding more accumulators or some lights, which extends or shorten the time before the accu(s) - and so the chest - is empty. With some experience you can trim this so, that only 5% of the main accu power is left, before the steam engines begin to work.

For more informations about that you can also look into this thread.

Note, that after running there is always some rest-energy in the steam-engine and boiler. This is used at the beginning of the night, this is quite normal.

Note also, that this complicated setup might be replaced by an easier in some future; sensors to measure the current state of accu-capacity or pollution-factor, switch the network of, instead of the inserter; there are many ideas.