Overview
Having trouble with electricity? Your power grid is a mess?In this guide I’ll teach you how to use Power Transformer and set it up properly.
How it works
Basically it allows you to split the higher output (current max at 20kW) into smaller output branches (current max at 1kW)
How to connect it
You connect the producer (generator) to the top left socket of the transformer (usually using heavy wire) and connect consumer at the other end (usually using regular wire).
Decor Penalties
As you may already know. Some buildings or utilities have bad decor rating.
Regular wire can hold 1kW power and has -5 decor (1tile radius).
Heavy wire can hold 20kW power and has -25 decor (6 tile radius).
You can build regular wire inside a wall/floor to hide their negative decor rating, but you can’t build heavy wire inside a wall/floor, therefore you can’t hide their negative decor rating completely.
By game design, the developer doesn’t want you to spread this heavy wire all over the place.
Currently there is no way to deal with those bad decor produced by heavy wire. They are just too much.
Example how bad they are:
I will also give you some tips about how to manage those in this guide.
But before we get there, first I will show you some examples.
Different example or scenario how you can use Power Transformer
- The first one is the basic use, you connect a generator to the producer using heavy wire and then connect regular wire in the consumer output to your building(s).
- The second one is to show you an example of having 2 transformers to split the watt usage into different area/buildings.
- The third one is a simple example if you want to connect manual generator without having trouble with the bad decor. You can connect regular wire as an input (producer) and heavy wire at the transformer consumer, this makes the transformer acting like a generator/battery. Well in a sense transformer is just like battery. they store 1kJ.
Putting some batteries in the manual generator network is recommended.
Power Transformer and Batteries
You can still use batteries to store your power.
The blue section’s batteries is storing power from the generator and can be use to power the transformer.
So when the generator stop working, the transformer will take power from the batteries.
Batteries in the green section are storing power from the transformer.
When the transformer is running out of power, the buildings in each green section will then use power from their own batteries network. They will not take power from other transformer that is not connected to them.
I recommend you to have batteries in the producer network, backup power is pretty important.
It depends. There are 2 things to consider whether you need a battery or not.
- How important is that particular network?
If that network is the core survivability of your colony, it’s better if you put some batteries for backup usage. Example: The transformer is connected to you oxygen machines. - How much power that is being consume each second in that network?
Transformer only store 1kJ power, if the network always consume 900-1000W every seconds, there will be a split seconds down time every 1-2seconds. What happen is your machine will stop working every 2 seconds. By putting a batteries it will help the transformer to store more juice and remove the downtime.
How to distribute & deal with the bad decor
You can create something like manhole (similar in real life).
As you can see here, I still have high decor in my hallway/corridor where my dupes are walking:
I use wire bridge to cross the heavy wire through wall/door.
Those heavy wires are connected to the other side of my base and at that end, it also got transformers distributing power for that sector.
I only have one giant power plant and distribute it all across the map.
Overview of my Colony
This is my power grid network and decor rating.
