Substations

Substations are rooms containing advanced grid management machinery. While optional, Engineering can set them up to give the station power grid higher redundancy and safety. Common practice is setting main grid to large power output (via Engine SMES or Solars), and then using substations to ration this power to specific sections of the station.

Substations can be very useful when preventing potentionally dangerous power grid situations from happening. Regulating amount of power to each department allows you to better ration power, which is espicially useful when running on solar arrays. If set up they also block power surges caused by malfunctioning machinery, such as short-circuit SMES. Therefore it is reccomended to set them up. Since SMESs are connected to station's RCON system, this setup may be done remotely. Alternatively, the AI may do this.

## Locations

There are 6 Substation locations across the station.

1. **Civilian West** - Located east of arrivals security office.
2. **Civilian East** - Located south of main dormitory bedroom.
3. **Engineering** - Located east of the Engineering Locker Room.
4. **Command** - Located between the Head of Personnel's office, and the Meeting Room.
5. **Medical** - Located between Robotics and Medbay.
6. **Research** - Located south of Miscellaneous Research.
7. **Security** - Located in Dormitory Maintenance, north of the poker table area.

## Machinery

Each substation contains following advanced electrical machinery

###  Breaker Box

Breaker box acts as isolation bridge between two power grids. It may be toggled either via RCON, or by clicking it manually. When enabled it bridges cables connected to it, effectively bypassing the substation. All breakers are enabled by default, until substations are set up.

###  SMES

The SMES unit acts both as regulator and storage. When set up this SMES takes power from master (red) power network, and sends it to the department subgrid. It's input/output values may be set, allowing you to precisely ration amount of power for that department.

## Setup

We have two theoretical situations, in which setup steps (and espicially values) will vary significantly:

### Engine Power

If engine is running amounts of power are sufficient to properly charge the substations. Follow each of following steps for all substations you wish to set up:

* Either gain access to RCON console, or enter the substation room.
* Adjust SMES settings to following values: Input 250 000W - Auto. Output 200 000 - ONLINE.
* Disable the relevant breaker box.
* Optional: Use power monitoring console to verify that subgrid has power. Alternatively check if the SMES output value is above 0W

### Solar / Alternative Power

If engine is not operational, and station's power is limited setup is slightly more complicated. If power is very low, you may disable the breakers on specific departments to cut them off. Depending on available power doing this to disable power to low priority areas (both Civilian substations, for example) may help drop the load a bit.

Then proceed with setup steps as outlined above, but adjust the settings accordingly. Usually you want the SMES to be inputting at least 10% more than outputting. For example, if Medbay grid is using 55kW, setting it's SMES to 65kW input (Auto) and 60kW output (Online) should suffice. However, please note that the SMES will charge very slowly.

If combined input of all SMESes in the grid exceeds available power, the SMESes will input partially, dividing available charge evenly by percentage.

### Notes

While many engineers see substations as "Fancy battery rooms", they open significantly more possibilities than power storage. You may use substations to limit amount of power to specific section of the station, or even reroute power from one substation to another! Remember that power monitoring console, along with RCON system, is very powerful tool that allows you to manage the station's power grid from comfort of your chair.

## Grid Wires

Each of the wire grids around the station are color coded. Knowing what each color represents will assist with grid maintenance and problem solving with grid issues.

* **Yellow:** *Power Sources* - These are used as connection between power sources (Solar panels, or Engine radiation collectors, for example) and SMES unit.
* **Cyan:** *Support Sub Grids* - Few locations contain these. While not subgrids on their own, these usually mean the area is powered by separate SMES unit (Atmospherics, AI Section, Engine), probably due to high power demands.
* **Red:** *Master* - Main power network which runs all around the station and connects substations to power sources.
* **Green:** *Sub Grids* - Each section of the station contains separate subgrid. They connect APCs to substations

## Antagonists

Substations also offer multiple interesting options for antagonists. If you decide to use powersink properly set up substations may inhibit it's efficiency significantly. However, substations may also be used as efficient weapon. SMES units may be hacked, allowing you to disable RCON and AI control, among other interesting options(TIP: Cutting the grounding wire will overload-discharge the SMES into it's output, slowly frying the connected APCs if not fixed quickly). If your goal is destructive, detonating explosives in substations may efficiently cripple power to one section of the station.