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Electricity powers many structures & tools and is very important for survival. It's also called Power.
Power depends on a network. Each Place can have more than one network. It is made of the following elements :
- Generator
- Power cables
- Batteries
- Power consumer
Network types
A network has 2 characteristics that depend on the generator (or generators) powering it:
- Current: AC or DC
- Voltage: 12V, 24V, 110V, 240V , 1Kv (or more) for power transmission if it exists
To connect 2 networks of different types, a transformer is needed
Generators
There is a large variety of power generators each with strengths and weaknesses. Most places will have a mix of them:
- The grid: Depending on the scenario, the grid can be used to get AC power (up to a certain Wattage) by spending money until supply is eventually cut off
- Solar panels: output depends on sunshine which means it is impacted by the time of day, season, and cloud coverage. Panels can be impacted by other objects' shadow (mainly trees).
- Wind turbine: output depends mainly on the weather which determines wind speed. Wind turbines can be impacted by blocking objects.
- Fuel-powered generator: those generators consume some kind of fuel (diesel, gas, coal, kerosene, hydrogen, wood, waste...) and turn it into power. The obvious issue here is to get access to fuel.
- Hydroelectric: A structure that generates power from the flow of a river or body of water that is not still. Requires such a terrain feature to exist when it is installed.
- Geothermal: Power from the heat beneath the Earth's surface
- Scenario-specific or new technology power sources: as the game progresses, some new technologies might be acquired that change the way electricity is generated (zero-point, antimatter, fusion, microwave beaming from space, etc)
For some or all of those generators, the possibility of a remote site just for electricity generation might be a good game option: dwellers explore the surrounding area to find a site that can generate power, build the generator, and spend time laying cables from the remote site to their place. This will be represented in the form of an access point located in a place. It might/should trigger events to build, upgrade, maintain, protect the remote generator. Might be far-fetched
Transformers
Typically inverters: they connect a network (for example 12V DC) to another (for example 240V AC), at a loss.
In that sense, transformers are actually both the power consumer of a network, and the power producer of another. See if they can be coded this way
Most transformers will handle 2-way transfers for at least one of their network, so they can act as both a consumer and a generator on that network. An inverter would accept a DC input from a solar panel/battery and a DC output to a battery, for example.
Power cables
Cables have a maximum wattage (actually amperage, but this can be simplified) that determines how much energy the network can sustain. Part of the network can have lower wattage than another but this means the total wattage of power consumers downstream becomes limited.
The length of a power cable will result in power loss over distance & time.
Cables faults can occur but are not common. They can be triggered by a variety of factors, the most common being overheating because of insufficient cable wattage. Power cables are a fire hazard.
Laying down power cables is possible within a building, from cell to cell. Cables can be integrated within most structural elements (floors, walls, etc) or as an addition to an existing cell, in which case they are visible, decreasing the room's beauty.
Power points can be added to power cables, which is the only way for power consumers to use the energy of the network.
Batteries
Many types of power storage exist, from chemical to mechanical (all the way up to renewably produced hydrogen). Generally speaking, batteries have the following characteristics:
- Capacity
- Efficiency (how much power you store based on the power you put in)
- Loss over time (the battery can get slowly discharged as time goes by) which can be based on current charge (discharges quicker when full) and conditions (temperatures, humidity, etc)
- Life span: all characteristics above will degrade as time goes by until the battery is eventually unusable
Power consumers
Any element that consumes power from cooling, heating, lighting, refrigeration, water pumping & heating, cooking, etc
Power consumers require a specific current type (AC or DC), voltage, and power consumption based on their use. A good example is a fridge, which uses more power when cooling down and less when simply maintaining temperature.
All power consumers need a power point.
By default, networks will define which consumers should be shut off if not enough power is available. This is a function of the network itself and can be manually tweaked if the network supports it. If it doesn't the rule is simply to shut off the consumer that's farther away from the generator in case the total available power on this network is not sufficient.
All networks should have behind the scene logging of inputs and outputs, which can be exposed with proper equipment. Historical data could be summarised every game day.
Sample network for first test
The generator is a 1kW solar panel:
- Current: DC
- Voltage: 12V
- Power:
- Max: 1000W
- Function(hardcoded at first): Bell curve from 0 (night time) to 0.7 (noon)
The inverter:
- Input
- Current: DC
- Voltage: 12V
- Max power: 2000W
- AC Output:
- Current: AC
- Voltage: 240V
- Power output W = input W * efficiency
- Efficiency Function: 0% when input is 0W, ramping up to 98% at 100W, gradually falling down to 95% at 2000W
- DC Output(When AC output is less than total input):
- Current: DC
- Voltage: 12V
- Power output W = input W * 99%
The battery:
- Input
- Current: DC
- Voltage: 12V
- Capacity: 8kWh
- Max output: 1000W
- Efficiency: 85% of input power is stored
- Depth of discharge damage: battery loses 100% of capacity after 4000 times when DoD is 20%, 500 times when DoD is 100%. On a curve.