Even though SmartPower manages power much better than Automation can do, there is one use case which it can't.
From Steam:
I have an edge case where a gravity battery signal would be useful (along with an AND operator):
Water wheels are used for power generation but during droughts they drain from a reservoir. Wind power is not consistent meanwhile. If there is a significant amount of wind, water from a reservoir can be preserved by sensing a signal from a gravity battery that it is approaching a stored energy threshold, allowing for floodgates controlling reservoir flow to be raised. In combination with and operators, automated logic can be applied to automate floodgates relative to energy in a system for drought conditions - such as to never drop below a certain amount of water in a system (to ensure headroom for crop irrigation purposes).
A caveat here is that if the battery is not 100% charged, then such signal would be triggering every tick. It's not efficient, but given there should be not many floodgates automated this way, it should be fine.
Even though SmartPower manages power much better than Automation can do, there is one use case which it can't.
From Steam:
A caveat here is that if the battery is not 100% charged, then such signal would be triggering every tick. It's not efficient, but given there should be not many floodgates automated this way, it should be fine.