Nuclear power as a suport for solar during a night

[MBas]

Hello there!

I believe I found a suitable use for Nuclear Power for huge bases where the CPU might be an issue. The idea is about to use this patern of solar panels array



This setup is based on idea from here viewtopic.php?f=208&t=50046

I am using a very efficient substation coverage which is marked by yellow square on the picture. I believe there is no better way how to reach higher ratio of (solar+batteries space) / substation space. This efficient of space coverage comes with the cost of having not perfect ratio of batteries / solar panel. It is not 21/25 as optimum but lower 26/32. This deviance can be compensated by another source of power during the night.

And we can have Nuclear Power plant for that (of course we can just build more batteries somewhere else but where is the fun in that?). Becouse we are missing few batteries we need a Nuclear which is supporting our factory during a night. It generates a steam during a whole day but support energy during a night only. With this design you need more steam turbines per one heat exchanger and also some steam storage. The numbers are:

Number of steam turbines per one heat exchanger: 5.722 (6 is fine)
Amount of steam storage per one heat exchanger: 24 033 (nearly 1 storage tank)

And how large should be our Nuclear Power plant to support solar array above? It should be

16 896.2 solar panels per one heat exchanger

That is a lot of solar panels per small nuclear! With this ratio the Nuclear power should be only about 1 percent of my total power given from solar. You can see from here that having nuclear with covering 1 percent is no CPU problem at all even for huge bases.

You may use any Nuclear setup you like, the most CPU efficient is probably something using element like this one



You can also have an exact formula for nuclear size you need, if your batteries/solar panels ratios are different. A general formula is:

General formula for "nuclear nighttime support":

number_of_heat_exchangers = (25 * number_of_batteries - 21 * number_of_solars) * 9 / 104545

which is obviously zero if you have achieved ratio number_of_batteries / number_of_solars = 21 / 25.

[Loewchen]

You may use any Nuclear setup you like, the most CPU efficient is probably something using element like this one

If CPU time efficiency is a factor for you, then nuclear power will never be relevant and you should just build more of your solar setup.

[MBas]

If CPU time efficiency is a factor for you, then nuclear power will never be relevant and you should just build more of your solar setup.

That is an unclear statement. The real question is "how much CPU issues bother you" rather than "just go for most CPU efficient way and throw any number out of the window". My point is, if you have two solutions when one has 99 percent of CPU performance then the other, the question about CPU is no longer important, right? Why shoud I care if I lost about 1 percent of performance in any relevant scenario? This difference can be neglected just by temperateure of room where my computer is.

This issue is not about complete replacement solar by nuclear (I thought it was more or less clear) but about having one small nuclear for a very huge base.