Battery

Power block information is listed in the table down below.

Overview

The battery is a single block that has a similar function to the reactors in that it will power blocks on a grid. It does not require any materials to be powered and does come with a small initial charge but beyond that,s it must collect energy either from Solar panels, Large Reactors, and/or Small Reactors before it can be put to use (or even other batteries).

With Update 01.105, a battery, once built, already has a 30% charge, meaning it can be used immediately. However, it is now no longer possible to salvage Power Cells from a battery, any power cells will be recovered as Scrap Metal, losing a significant amount of Nickel and Silicon.

Usage

The battery is a convenient solution to saving/reserving power and using no fuel that reactors for example would otherwise require. Or in the case of an incident, provide emergency power while repairs are made.

The battery block may be placed anywhere and unlike Reactors does not need to be connected to a Conveyor network for refueling.

Control Panel

• Max Output – Maximum amount of power the battery can output to the grid
• Max Required Input – Maximum amount of power the battery can receive when in recharge state
• Max Stored Power – Maximum amount of power that can be stored on the battery
• Current Input – The amount of power that the battery is currently drawing from the grid
• Current Output – The amount of power that the battery is currently providing to the grid
• Stored Power – The remaining amount of power that is stored within the battery
• Fully Depleted In – Time remaining till the battery is depleted of stored power
• Fully Charged In – Time remaining till the battery is fully charged.

Indicators

	Charge Mode			Toggle Block
Charged %	Auto	Recharge	Discharge	Off
100%
≥75%
≥50%
≥25%
>0%
0%

Recharging

Although a newly constructed battery will have some charge already available, providing power instantly once complete, the main purpose of the battery is to store and discharge power as needed. A ship may also recharge its battery through Connectors by drawing power from the other side while docked. This does not cost extra power. However, recharging from any source will only work at an 80% efficiency rate which incurs a 20% penalty on recharging, meaning the block needs 20% more power for the amount of power returned to the grid.

Recharge Toggle

A Battery can recharge regardless of whether its Recharge setting is toggled or not, but if it’s set to Recharge it will ONLY recharge and will not discharge or provide power. During this state, the battery will only draw power from the surrounding grid to store in its reserves. It will not discharge again till the player toggles “recharge” once again. Be aware that the charging process is not 100% efficient. Regardless of where the energy is coming from, only about 83.33% of the energy will be stored in the battery, the remainder being wasted due to inherent inefficiency.

Discharge Toggle

Once a battery has enough charge in it it may be set to only discharge its stored power into the grid, the battery should take priority over reactors (using fuel) but not active solar panels – this may vary due to subgrids, etc. A battery can discharge its stored power whether its discharge setting is toggled or not, but toggling the discharge means it will ONLY discharge and not at all draw power from other power sources such as other batteries or reactors.

When neither Discharge nor Recharge is toggled

During this state which is the default state of a newly built battery, it will recharge automatically if there is any surplus power it can draw from and discharge automatically if there is a shortfall in power supply that is if there is more power being drawn that otherwise available without the battery’s reserves. This is unwise as it may if Reactors are present quickly recharge and then discharge this stored energy, since the battery’s charging is inefficient you essentially lose fuel in the process.

Auto Toggle

This mode will enable the battery to automatically recharge when at 0%, and then discharge when at 100%. In other words, it will automatically recharge and power the grid without player intervention.

Charging with Reactors

While reactors can recharge batteries, the efficiency is only about 80%, as noted above. Reactors due to high output can recharge the battery quickly, however, this is considered very inefficient. Merely converting the stored energy in Uranium Ingots, to stored energy in batteries – is not a 1:1 conversion. Resulting in essentially losing 20% of the fuel in the process with inefficiency [3.60 MWh of Reactor output -> 3.00 MWh of Battery output after being fully charged].

Charging with Solar panels

While a single Solar Panel does not have the same power output as reactors, it is considered “free” energy since no fuel is spent to generate power. It will however be painfully slow with a single or a few panels being used and suffers the same efficiency penalty as do Reactors, a single large Solar Panel operating at peak effectiveness (160 kW) will take upwards of 23 hours, 26 minutes, and 15 seconds to fully charge a large ship battery and 1 day, 7 hours, 15 minutes and 0 seconds for a small ship battery – so ideally a large array of solar panels should be used.

While 30+ panels appear impractical to be built on a ship for a shorter recharge, it’s more logical to create such things as recharge satellites that your ships can dock with to recharge their batteries.

Power Output

Once charged, the battery can begin to power the grid it is placed on. It has nearly the same output capabilities as a small reactor with an output of 12 MW on large ships/stations, and 4 MW on small ships. The battery life can vary depending on power usage. A typical small ship can last anywhere from 2-4 hours while in constant use (moving, mining, etc). Large ships will use far more power, and a single battery will only sustain a default red ship for 2 hours while idling, or 15 minutes of constant movement.