Maximum power per coastal tile

mrvn · Post by **mrvn** » Mon Oct 03, 2016 7:18 pm

The other day I was playing with water only at start so water was a very rare resource. So how much power can you generate with a limited coast line?

How about one 1:14:10 line per tile of coast? 340 Steam engines going full power from 34 tiles of coast.

: factorio-steam-all.png (3.59 MiB) Viewed 7993 times

At first I tried placing boilers next to each other or merging water from 2 pumps into one pipe. But any kind of sharing will give unbalanced results leaving some steam engines without water. So my design specifically keeps each 1:14:10 set completely separated from one another (water wise). That means I have even and odd lines of boilers that are offset so no 2 boilers touch. This also means I have empty space between the rows of boilers, ideal to place inserters moving coal from one boiler row to the other. The most compact form of supplying coal. First I tried 2 sets of 7 boilers per row. But then where do the inserters get their power? No space for the power poles. So I used sets of 5, 5 and 4 boilers per row. Now the sets can be spaced a bit apart allowing power poles to be placed and the power pole to reach all inserters. One can also walk between the boilers so crossing the line is no problem.

But putting boiler rows in every line means every line needs an offshore pump. But offshore pumps can only be placed 2 tiles apart. Some landfill later I've made it so I had a parallel strip of land to the (now also straight) coast line. Pump can then be interleaved giving one pump per vertical tile.

: factorio-steam-boiler.png (1.08 MiB) Viewed 7993 times

The boiler pattern repeats every 2 rows and can be extended upwards as far as inserters can move coal fast enough. How many rows I don't know. Haven't tested / calculated the maximum. 34 rows still works and if you reach the limit you have to add a gap with a coal belt.

The next problem was connecting the steam engines. Each engine has a hight of 3 tiles. But round pipes can tunnel under an engine. So for each set of 3 rows one gets an engine and 2 tunnel under it. Repeat 3 times with a different row getting the engine. This gives you a pattern of 3 engines for 3 rows, one engine each. Now repeat that larger pattern 10 times for the perfect 1:14:10 ratio. This requires a lot of round pipes, A LOT.

: factorio-steam-engine.png (2.33 MiB) Viewed 7993 times

The pattern repeats 10 times in X direction because that's the limit of how much water an offshore pump gives. It can be repeated endlessly in Y direction.
I used substations to connect the engines in 2 of the 3 columns. That connects all the steam engines but the substations aren't connected. So in the 3rd column I use medium poles to connect the substations. This allows walking across the line. Imagine you had to walk around this beats.

Overall my pattern has 340 rows for a total of 340 steam engines resulting in 173MW power, enough for 549 radars plus all the inserters and electric miners with some left over to charge a accumulator. With 550 radars it fluctuates but drains the accumulator more often than it can recharge and overall slowly drains it.

: factorio-steam-graph.png (546.19 KiB) Viewed 7993 times

Enjoy,
Mrvn

Note: If you use solar cells and steam engines with hot water storage to cover the night then I think optimum is a 1:14:33:3 ratio (33 engines, 3 tanks). Imagine how WIDE this would get with more than 3 time the engines attached.

eidolonFIRE_XI · Post by **eidolonFIRE_XI** » Tue Oct 18, 2016 9:44 pm

I like it!

I'll definitely give this a go next big build.

mrvn · Post by **mrvn** » Mon Oct 24, 2016 10:35 am

I noticed that the design is limited by the amount of coal that can be passed through the first row of boilers. With fast inserters this is a lot, with stack inserters even more I figure. But it is a limit.

So I thought about other ways to fill the boilers. Instead of across the rows how about filling it along the rows? You can use a long inserter to fill a boiler across the bend pipe. You can even use the pass along trick. So you get long inserter, bend pipe, boiler, bend pipe, long inserter, bend pipe, boiler, bend pipe, long inserter, ... up to 14 boilers. No matter how big your power plant the maximum chain length will alwayss be 14 boilers and long inserters can handle that speed. The limiting factor then becomes the belt(s) bringing the coal to the first long inserter.

The other thing I'm trying now, after a few black outs, is to make electricity without needing electricity. Instead of electric mining drills use burner mining drills. And exclusively use burner inserters to fill the burner mining drills and boilers. Burner inserters are slow so the pass along method reaches its limit quickly. Feeding coal through belts gives tricky patterns to keep up the density.

huliosh · Post by **huliosh** » Thu Jan 12, 2017 5:05 pm

Same amount of boilers

screenshot

Masurement is 15 tiles per 4 assemblers with gap.

Deadly-Bagel · Post by **Deadly-Bagel** » Thu Jan 12, 2017 5:30 pm

The point is more if water is a limited resource but solar power isn't an option (probably because there's no water to easily create safe zones so everywhere is infested with biters), yes that design is a lot more compact but requires more shoreline which you may not have.

Well with 0.15 the point may be moot anyway, not only does the design of boilers change but from memory steam will lose heat travelling in pipes, so ideally you want your boilers plugged directly into your steam engines for zero energy loss.

huliosh · Post by **huliosh** » Thu Jan 12, 2017 5:33 pm

Deadly-Bagel wrote:The point is more if water is a limited resource but solar power isn't an option (probably because there's no water to easily create safe zones so everywhere is infested with biters), yes that design is a lot more compact but requires more shoreline which you may not have.

Well with 0.15 the point may be moot anyway, not only does the design of boilers change but from memory steam will lose heat travelling in pipes, so ideally you want your boilers plugged directly into your steam engines for zero energy loss.

Got it.

pieppiep · Post by **pieppiep** » Mon Apr 03, 2017 5:24 pm

It can be even more extreme with the pumps and boilers setup like this. The ratio 1.5:21:15 also works. See viewtopic.php?f=208&t=8854 where I got the idea for the 1.5 pump per line.
Also, at the cost of a little longer lines, I've added belts. With 5 blue belts for each 1/4 of the complete setup a lot fuel can be brought in for a very long cost line.

: MaxCoastalPowerBoilers.png (1.36 MiB) Viewed 5952 times

This is how I've setup the engine units.

: MaxCoastalPowerEngines.png (1.31 MiB) Viewed 5952 times

And finally the electric network info.

: MaxCoastalPowerProduction.png (575.26 KiB) Viewed 5952 times

pieppiep · Post by **pieppiep** » Mon Apr 03, 2017 5:41 pm

I forgot the blueprints.

The entire setup in 1 blueprint is probably to big to place at once.

Entire setup

So the different parts,

The pumps

The boilers

Engines start

Engines middle

Engines end

mrvn · Post by **mrvn** » Tue Apr 04, 2017 11:49 am

Do all engines actually get enough water? Note that you have to use up all of the power so all engines run at 100% to see if enough water reaches them. Any time I shared water I got an uneven split and one side didn't get enough water for the last steam engine.

pieppiep · Post by **pieppiep** » Tue Apr 04, 2017 12:52 pm

240 engines * 510 kW each = 122400 kW = 122.4 MW
With all that beacons I use enough to see it's working correct, see the electric network info screen I've added.
Factorio is weird sometimes with numbers, satisfaction is 122 MW but the engines generate 121 MW.

mrvn · Post by **mrvn** » Thu Apr 06, 2017 2:23 pm

And if the last engine in every second row only gets 95% water would you notice with a number like 121MW?

septemberWaves · Post by **septemberWaves** » Mon Apr 10, 2017 9:51 pm

This setup is theoretically infinitely tileable, but the boilers do need to be supplied with fuel. For reference purposes, I've figured out how much you can supply with one blue belt (though obviously it'd generally be more practical to use multiple input belts once you have a lot of arrays). I've worked to 4 significant figures for all calculations

10 steam boilers running at full power consume 1.275 coal per second.

A fully-compressed blue belt transports 40 coal per second, which is enough to supply coal to 31 whole steam arrays running at full power.

So, by comparing fuel values, here's how many steam arrays a single blue belt can power using each common fuel type in the game, with power output displayed in brackets:

Wood: 15 (76.5MW)
Coal: 33 (158.1.3MW)
Solid Fuel: 96 (489.6MW)
Rocket Fuel: 871 (4.442GW)

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