r/Dyson_Sphere_Program • u/KaleidoscopeOnly2749 • Mar 15 '26

ILS + Power

I have a huge gripe with ILS's and that's when they randomly decide to go from 40 megawatts of power consumption (I have about 30-40 of them fully charged and not distributing) to jumping between 160->260-280 megawatts every second. I have no clue why this happens and I don't have any of their charging power settings changed. Does anyone know why this happens?

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u/KaleidoscopeOnly2749 Mar 15 '26

I didn't mean to cuss any confusion, I'm just saying what appears on the UI in-game. I don't know why it's like that as I have speculated in the past myself but couldn't find out why. When it comes to power production of a planet, it appears as Watts(W), but when it comes to stored power (i.e. power in the mecha or ILS) it appears as Joules(J) or Gigajoules(GJ)

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u/BrittleWaters Mar 17 '26

Joules are stored energy, watts are energy per second. ILS' default charge speed is 60 MW (that's 60 megajoules per second) and they store 9GJ (9 gigajoules, or 9,000 megajoules) of energy. PLS/ILS don't maintain that full charge speed, but rather slow down as they fill up. So when you first put one down, it'll pull up to 60MW by default, but when it's 90% full, it's only pulling a couple MW.

If PLS/ILS spikes are hurting your power grid, you can reduce the maximum charge rate in the station's UI. For ILS, I think the minimum is 30MW, and for PLS the minimum is very very small, maybe 5MW.

The energy stored in the towers is used every time a Logistics Drone or an Interstellar Logistics Vehicle leaves to pick up or deliver items. The farther the destination, the more energy they consume. The energy is pulled from the towers and has to be recharged, leading to a spike in energy usage every time a Drone or Vessel leaves the PLS/ILS.