Talk:Energy/@comment-34973206-20180311233802/@comment-5843524-20180312004208

When you say "the generators stop producing energy at full capacity", do you mean your energy usage is more than your generation, so the reserve stay empty? Then you just need to build more generators or remove some users (or be OK with things not being fully powered).

Let's look at a Thermal Plant for example. You place it somewhere that is hot (say near a thermal gauser that shows as 70C) and it starts generating power (at 70C, it makes 59.4 Energy per minute (EPM)) and starts filling its internal storage of 250 Energy. If your attached base is using no Energy, it will take 250/59.4=4.21 minutes for the Thermal Plant to fill up, then the energy it makes will just be going to waste since all it can do is top-up the already-full internal storage.

Let's say you build a Water Filtration Machine (or empty the one you already had built), so it starts pulling 51 EPM. This is less than your Thermal plan is generating, so the 250 Energy internal storage stays full (you are still generating 59.4-51=8.4 EPM).

If you then start charging 2 Power Cells in a Power Cell Charger, that will try to draw 60 more EPM. Since you were only making 8.4 EPM, you are now losing 60-8.4=51.6 EPM while the Power Cells are charging. Your 250 Energy internal storage win run out in 250/51.6=4.84 minutes. At that point, you will have put 250+4.84*8.4=291 Energy into the Power Cells, so they will be 291/400=73% full.

At that point your total power generation will be 59.4 EPM and your base will try to draw 111 EPM, so things will slow down. All the generated power will be drained from the Thermal Plant's internal storage as fast as it fills, so it will stay at 0 to 1 Energy out of 250, until the Power Cells are full. I'm not sure how long that will take since the Power Cell Charger is competing for power with the Water Filtration Machine. They will both be running slow, but I'm not sure if they will be even or what.

It works the same way if you have more generators. Except generators that use consumables (Bioreactor and Nuclear Reactor) stop consuming when their internal Energy storage is full.