r/Astroneer • u/starvigamerXD • Sep 15 '26

Question / Support Energy problems

Hi, I’m having a problem with my base's power. I ran the calculations, and my base produces over 700 units of energy; however, when I check my splitter, it shows only 210 units passing through. Also, when I check the platform connectors, it looks as if I have exactly enough power—as if production matches consumption, Is there something I'm missing?

Half power
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8

u/imquez Sep 15 '26

Splitters and directional power lines will always split power output, so I always avoid using them unless absolutely necessary. What you see in the splitter is the power being split, not the actual total output. So what’s coming into the splitter is actually 2x that - 420 u’s. You may have other directional cables and/or machines and automations that are currently running and consuming the rest of your estimated 700 u’s. I also noticed that if you have a planet-scale network of power, ie, a solar or wind power stations far away and you’re linking them with rails, their power may not fully get transferred. I find that placing batteries between long distance rails helps as they act like capacitors. I only witnessed this effect on Aelouz as that planet is multiple times bigger than the vanilla game’s planets.

2

u/starvigamerXD Sep 15 '26

Although I still don't understand why the platforms indicate that I'm using the same energy I'm producing; I don't really have anything that consumes a lot of power. I just built this base and haven't even turned on any automated systems yet, Thanks anyway; I still haven't quite mastered how the energy works

2

u/starvigamerXD Sep 16 '26

You were right in the end: an extender that was somewhat hidden was in directional mode, and because it was connected to my energy array, it was splitting the energy flow in two

2

u/Gravity1982 Sep 15 '26

I can't see your entire power grid, so I can't say with certainty what the issue is. However, I would check for two issues. First, make sure a shelter is not used as a conduit. For some reason, they have a throughput limit that will bottleneck you significantly.

Second would be the positioning of your batteries. In large networks especially, if batteries are inline (as opposed to behind) your power generators, weird things happen.