How to place a wind turbine????

[Delnizz]

I have watched close to 20 videos on this, it just doesn't work.

I am trying to place a wind turbine on top of a light armor block. It will not snap to the block. There is nothing around this, I am just starting out and I am over 100 yards from my lander ship on flat ground. I have tried placing it on one light armor block and on top of 2 light armor blocks stacked on top of one another. The turbine will not place, or if it does, it falls off because it is not snapped to the blocks.

I have tried free placement mode and the gravity placement mode. Nothing works.

What am I missing?

[Manwith Noname]

Heh, I just edited one of my landing pad LCDs to show wind weirdness.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1691986683

Turbine 1, when it was the only turbine before expansion had about 340 as it's max output. in fact, I have a rizla packet here where I wrote it down....

Oh, this was after I though I'd lost some output from the first turbine after placing a second. Before expanding to 4, turbines 1 and 2 had max outputs of 335.64 and 346.83 respectively.

[RoofCat]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1692023710
All of them have exactly the same max power ratio. I can't force more now even if I destroy the rest and put it twice as high. While when I started with just 2 and a slightly different Y type leg design (or was it upside down L?), one of them had 390 something. Whatever. I can't follow that anymore. I just know that 7 up and 5 between will give me ~360 max. The rest is rocket science seemingly.

[Manwith Noname]

I was considering offsetting like that to see what would happen.

The thing I don't get about my configuration is this. If turbine 2 "blocks" turbine 1 reducing the potential output, then 4 should do the same to 3. At least when assuming a "wind" that is constant from a single direction. Well, maybe it is and through some strange voodoo the planets aligned for them to produce the same max output.

[Botji]

For OP, it would help a lot if you had a screenshot of what is going on because "I cant place this block" could be any number of things.

As for turbine weirdness, they seem to fairly often bug out the displayed power generation but they still usually work as they should. They could show very low power like 50kw but then if you look at a battery it would have the correct recharge of like 380kw or whatever the turbine is actually giving.

Toggling the off/on button on the turbine tends to fix this.

[-VG- Napster]

Originally posted by ForcedSlave:

I have watched close to 20 videos on this, it just doesn't work.

I am trying to place a wind turbine on top of a light armor block. It will not snap to the block. There is nothing around this, I am just starting out and I am over 100 yards from my lander ship on flat ground. I have tried placing it on one light armor block and on top of 2 light armor blocks stacked on top of one another. The turbine will not place, or if it does, it falls off because it is not snapped to the blocks.

I have tried free placement mode and the gravity placement mode. Nothing works.

What am I missing?

Equip the block to your hotbar
press the key on the hotbar
then press "B" < until its says local grid >
just make sure youre not in gravity or free placement mode
in survival best to fly up with the jetpack and place it from an angle looking downwards onto the spot where you want it.

[Wastefield]

I wouldn't recommend using local grid placement mode as it may cause weird issues?

I had problems in a multiplayer game where I couldn't get a Wind Turbine and Basic Assembler to both show in Terminal, no matter how many times I made sure it was a continuous grid with Light Armor Blocks. I had to rebuild both of them and the armor blocks between with free placement mode, then it finally worked.
I think there might be issues with the new "local grid" mode, causing "connected but separate" grids - like I had placed armor slopes on hill, forgot one armor block which I later added behind them but that probably split the grid for a moment and then it just let me add the block in between without merging: makes me think that afterwards the game doesn't know which grid each block should belong to? Either that or all blocks must be placed in the same placement mode as I might have switched between free and local grid...

[Takamiki]

So about the power output of wind turbines i have found to consistantly have them with max out put 400kW you need 3 things; atleast 10 large grid block away from the closest terrain voxel. And when placing another turbine 5 blocks apart (or 7 if you aren't counting the turbine's build size and just collision. And 1 block up from any other block seems turbine's clearance includes 1 block down.

[Chale]

I see in a lot of these pics everyone is putting wind turbines up right, would it not be more optimal to put them sideways? the 2 pics below show my setup and all of them are at optimal performance. it seems that only the sides of the turbine need to be clear, the top's clearance doesn't seem to matter

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1692952698

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1692952768

[Takamiki]

as for placing them sideways does indeed allow you to fit more wind turbines in a set space if you can afford it. it just mainly when you are starting out and you want as much power per turbine you can afford to make. i imagine later that would be indeed the best way to place turbines later just at that point you should have other options for power you can afford.

[Wastefield]

The sideways ones in the pic are losing efficiency - even though it's in "optimal" region, 329 kW is not max, it goes up to 350-360 kW (apparently even 390 kW). Since Wind Turbines are only meant for stations, there's pretty much infinite space available for use, size only matters with ships...
Xocliw was talking with someone on the streams about placing such sideways turbines, they mentioned that those lose power for being too close to each other.

[Chale]

mars for some reason has much lower kw efficiency (less wind, which doesnt make sense since there is no wind blockers there i.e. trees) then earth. here is a wind turbine from one of my earth bases using the same tower configuration.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1693319079

[RoofCat]

Originally posted by Chale:

mars for some reason has much lower kw efficiency (less wind, which doesnt make sense since there is no wind blockers there i.e. trees) then earth. here is a wind turbine from one of my earth bases using the same tower configuration.

you could consider atmospheric pressure for wind turbine to work well

[Chale]

Originally posted by RoofCat:

you could consider atmospheric pressure for wind turbine to work well

very true, i dont know enough about the wind mechanic in this game to know what effects it from planet to planet yet.

[baddoggs]

Originally posted by Manwith Noname:

The only thing I can imagine is you are too close and preventing placement due to "collision".

The base fits on a single large armour block but the bounding box is larger due to where the blades of the turbines end up.

I had the same issue and THIS was the problem.

[Xilo The Odd]

wow i have been away awhile the wind turbines are in!