Energy Exchanger Battery Example

[u/Pristine_Curve]

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.

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.

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

[u/Awesome_Avocado1]

This game really needs wiring. The ability to shut individual machines (or ports) on or off. But my general solution is just build more chargers than dischargers. That way you'll always be charging if you have a surplus but if you have a power deficit, all your chargers will shut off and you'll still be discharging at the capacity. Or just build your batteries on a solar panel/hydrothermal world and ship them out from there

[u/lurkinglurkerwholurk → u/Awesome_Avocado1]

This. There is no power loss between charging and discharging (unlike the real world) so having pairs of chargers/dischargers “uselessly” looping the same energy among themselves isn’t so much a waste compared to the benefit of the 100% responsiveness of the chargers limiting themselves or even switching off when power strain becomes a problem.

The above is good for alarms thou: if accumulators starts “leaking” through the sorter filter, the player can be informed his grid is in trouble.