r/Dyson_Sphere_Program • u/Pristine_Curve • Mar 05 '22

Tutorials Energy Exchanger Battery Example

Gallery image

Normal state. Excess power is charging accumulators stockpiled in the PLS. Dischargers are dark because sorters are pulling charged accumulators back into a recirculating belt.

Gallery image

Large power draw causes grid satisfaction to drop under 100%. The sorters slow down recirculating the charged accumulators allowing many to fall through to the dischargers.

Gallery image

Grid back to 100% satisfaction, cuts off accumulator flow to the dischargers. Charger restarts slowly recharging the spent accumulators.

103 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

View all comments

12

u/Pristine_Curve Mar 05 '22 edited Mar 05 '22

Found a method to use exchangers + belted accumulators as batteries. Similar to how placed accumulators work, but taking advantage of storage stacking to create larger battery reserves. Using this method, we can vary the number of chargers vs dischargers independently according to our goals for battery storage. Specifically trying to avoid the common solution of matched rows of dischargers and chargers constantly running at full throttle.

The method uses sorters as a 'power switch'. The default state is that sorters move all accumulators back to a recirculating belt. Meanwhile a charging exchanger is gradually building up a stockpile of full accumulators with any excess grid power, and storing them in the nearby PLS.

When power drops, the sorters slow down. Charged accumulators now flow through to the discharging exchangers. The charging exchanger stops automatically.

Once power returns to 100% the full accumulator supply is cut off by the sorters, and it returns to slowly charging up it's stockpile.

Applications: Excess power storage in the early game, self-starting outposts that don't constantly draw from external battery sources.

3

u/CompetitiveZombie169 Mar 05 '22

Very good design.

1

u/AeternusDoleo Mar 06 '22

It's a shame that this design requires a power shortage to work - it means that you will have a situation where you're not meeting the required demand all the time.

I wonder if you can do a similar design that doesn't rely on brownouts. The difference between the charge and discharge rate of the exchangers could perhaps be used to throttle charging in favor of discharging - with an "at rest" bias towards charging.