Mining operation, insufficient power, shutting down

[Magzimum]

My Minmus mining operation has the habit of running out of power at night, because I did not put the equivalent of a small moon worth of batteries onto my mining rig. However, the mining rig does not automatically start up again as the sun comes up. The ISRU (Convert-O-Tron) parts don't shut down, and it looks like the radiators also keep working... so the problem is just 20 drills, which I can manage, but which is rather tedious. 

Are there any tricks or fixes? And is this a bug that it won't start up again, or am I possibly supposed to manually restart the mining process every day? 

I guess that nowadays the advice #1 is to wait for 1.2 to come out, and upgrade... but I am in the middle of a really awesome career, with some Jool-5 plans that are quite advanced, so I am not quite in the mood to redesign everything, and would love to play 1.1 for a few more days - possibly a few weeks. (That's also why the mining rig is quite large - I intend to go big). 

Weirdly, my older mining rig did not have this issue. It just kept going through the night. But I think that was because of a bug where some solar panels received energy through the night. 

[Plusck]

I think you're right on all counts.

- if drills shut down, they don't restart
- ISRU just slows to zero then ramps up again if it loses power
- solar panels convince the game that you're getting power buggily, even if you shouldn't, during Minmus's night
- you're certainly right to continue awesome stuff in 1.1.3 rather than break things with 1.2pre or do nothing until 1.2 release
- switching to the full 1.2 experience requires comm net which requires relays, which requires some planning to switch from 1.1.3, especially for missions to far planets
- there's not much that can be done, other than transplanting some fuel cells, or reducing ISRU load and maybe adding ore tanks (ISRU is fast, after all).

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

Try turning all the drills on, going to the tracking center (not the map view, must be the tracking center itself), and warping through the Minmus night. Then go to your mining rig again. With any luck your drills will still be on because the game didn't perform as many checks on them.

Edited October 6, 2016 by EpicSpaceTroll139
Weird L got in there

[Superfluous J]

3 minutes ago, EpicSpaceTroll139 said:

Try turning all the drills on, going to the tracking center (not the map view, must be the tracking center itself) L, and warping through the Minmus night. Then go to your mining rig again. With any luck your drills will still be on because the game didn't perform as many checks on them.

In a more general sense: Only visit your mining stations during the day. They'll catch up to current time bathed in sunlight instead of plunged in darkness.

[nightingale]

@5thHorseman - Wait, are you saying it uses the current time's EC generation in the catch up logic?  That isn't right...

Edited October 7, 2016 by nightingale
Edit for clarity

[Superfluous J]

4 minutes ago, nightingale said:

@5thHorseman - Wait, are you saying it uses the current time's EC generation in the catch up logic?  That isn't right...

It used to. I don't know about currently. Now that you mention it, I did recently show up at a mining station at night and it ran, though it could have just been running on battery power.

Are you saying that the catch-up code actually takes into account planetary rotation to determine when the sun was visible and not? If so, that's frickin' genius.

Edited October 7, 2016 by 5thHorseman

[Magzimum]

I noticed that in warp 10000x the drills just keep going. I guess I just wasn't impatient enough earlier.

I am guessing that this is essentially the same solution as what @EpicSpaceTroll139 suggested, where the game just doesn't perform any checks to shut things down...

It's not cheating either in my opinion, because I would have more than enough time to fill the tanks but I'm just happy to find a way to do it with less effort on my side. Now the mining rig stands idle, waiting for the giant mothership to land (it needs to be built first).

Thanks for all the answers!

[magnemoe]

Mapping an key to drills help a lot, I tend to use 1 for deploy and start drills, 2 to retract. 
One tricks is that the mining will continue wile unloaded, however this is not calculated unless its more than an day / 6 hour since visited so then you get night leave base and don't return until a day later.
 

[Sharpy]

I see one critical problem with your rig in the screenshot, one which once fixed, will end your current power woes.

No little icon of IVA kerbal engineer window in the lower right.

 

Level	Multiplier
☆☆☆☆☆	5x
★☆☆☆☆	9x
★★☆☆☆	13x
★★★☆☆	17x
★★★★☆	21x
★★★★★	25x

Any serious mining operation should include one at least 3-star engineer.

If one were to set the 3-star engineer as 'nominal', you're operating at 6% of nominal efficiency of your rig. Add an engineer, and all the fuel tanks will be full long before evening comes.

---

will end your current power woes. qualifier used on purpose. Once 20 drills begin working under engineer's control, your 32 gigantors may become inadequate.