Power Transformer

The Power Transformer is an electrical building used to move power between two separate grids while limiting the load seen by the lower-capacity side. It has one upper-left input and one lower-right output. In normal use, a high-power grid feeds the transformer through the input, and the output supplies up to 1 kW to the connected circuit. The output-side circuit calculates its own load independently, while the input-side circuit includes the power drawn by the output side.

This makes the Power Transformer a standard tool for safely stepping power down from Heavi-Watt or other high-capacity distribution lines to regular wire networks that can cross tiles. Generators and Batteries are often placed on a Heavi-Watt grid, then one or more transformers feed consumers on a lower wattage cable. In that setup, the transformer helps prevent overload damage on the consumer-side wires by capping the amount of power they can draw.

The reverse arrangement is also useful: a transformer can draw power from a lower-wattage circuit that has multiple power producers and output it into a higher-power network. This protects the lower circuit from overload while still feeding the main grid and preserving the advantages of using low-capacity wires where appropriate.

A few important interaction notes make the building especially useful in carefully designed power systems:

• The transformer contains an internal battery buffer of 1 kJ.
• It operates without any power cost or charge loss unless it is disabled by automation or disconnected from its output circuit; if that happens, the internal battery drains rapidly.
• Automation can interrupt power flow in the same way as Switches and Power Shutoffs, but doing so causes power runoff.
• The internal battery behaves like a regular battery and is limited to a recharge rate of 1 kW.
• On its own, the transformer’s internal battery limits available output to 1 kW and prevents overload, but adding more batteries or transformers to the same circuit can increase available power enough to cause overload damage.
• The transformer produces heat as long as it contains energy, regardless of whether power is moving in or out.
• Two transformers drawing from a high-wattage input can be paired to fully supply a Conductive Wire grid while keeping it safe from overload.

In practice, the transformer is less about generating power than about controlling where power may travel and how much can be drawn from a given wire segment. Using transformers to isolate sensitive wire runs is one of the most reliable ways to prevent overload damage while still distributing power efficiently across a colony.