Solid Fuel powered boilers?

[Blaank]

Are there any conditions in which I would lose power from pumping oil, refining, and turning it into solid fuel via petrolium gas, light oil, or heavy oil?

[Nailfoot]

Not sure what you mean by "lose power"? Are you asking if solid fuel produces enough power to support its production?

If so, the answer is yes. But you will still need a lot of steam engines to power a medium sized base.

[KatherineOfSky]

You can use any fuel in boilers -- wood, coal, solid fuel, rocket fuel, not to mention wooden chests, and wooden power poles...

You can lose power if power lines are destroyed.

[AlexMBrennan]

Are there any conditions in which I would lose power from pumping oil, refining, and turning it into solid fuel via petrolium gas, light oil, or heavy oil?

Energywise you should be making a profit (for a quick test I threw 100 solid fuel in a boiler and got out 520 soild fuel from one depleted well, refinery and chemical factories).

Obviously it is possible to come up with scenarios where you would lose energy (e.g. if you build a billion refineries for one oil well then the idle draw may eat most your profits) so use some common sense I guess.

[MisterSpock]

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

Are there any conditions in which I would lose power from pumping oil, refining, and turning it into solid fuel via petrolium gas, light oil, or heavy oil?

Energywise you should be making a profit (for a quick test I threw 100 solid fuel in a boiler and got out 520 soild fuel from one depleted well, refinery and chemical factories).

Obviously it is possible to come up with scenarios where you would lose energy (e.g. if you build a billion refineries for one oil well then the idle draw may eat most your profits) so use some common sense I guess.

Also using productivity moduls instead of efficiency moduls in the chemicalplant for solid fuel, is a waste in total energy output. Its only worth if you producing solid fuel for rocket.

[Blaank]

To clarify I was wondering if there was a possible way to get net power loss such as using standard oil refining then cracking all heavy to light, all light to petrolium gas, then making the petrolium gas into solid fuel and burning it in boilers.

[AlexMBrennan]

all light to petrolium gas, then making the petrolium gas into solid fuel

Not doing that would fall under common sense (3 light oil either makes 3 solid fuel or can be cracked into 2 petroleum which makes 1 solid fuel).
But yeah, you will still make a profit... even if it's only 50% of what you could be making, for no reason.

[Diviance]

Petroleum has way too many good uses to turn it into solid fuel unless you simply have a very significant abundance of it. Coal is a better option since it has, comparatively, few uses. Plastic and batteries are quite important and require a lot of petroleum.

That is my opinion, anyway.

[LeafMuncher]

If you're talking specifically about using more power than you produce (in fuel), you can do that with modules and beacons since they draw considerably more power than normal production

[Warlord]

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

Are there any conditions in which I would lose power from pumping oil, refining, and turning it into solid fuel via petrolium gas, light oil, or heavy oil?

Energywise you should be making a profit (for a quick test I threw 100 solid fuel in a boiler and got out 520 soild fuel from one depleted well, refinery and chemical factories).

Obviously it is possible to come up with scenarios where you would lose energy (e.g. if you build a billion refineries for one oil well then the idle draw may eat most your profits) so use some common sense I guess.

This is the best answer. I've always been skeptical of the thought, but never got around to testing it all in a separate closed system to find out. And especially if the well was depleted.

Keep in mind that light oil is the best to convert to solid rather than cracking it down to petroleum and converting that. And if you use certain modules (productivity and/or speed) it's likely you might come out power negative. But alex's claim is that it uses less than 20% of the power it produces to make the investment, which is a pretty darn good ratio.