Anyone use 100% solar power?

[Frost]

(I'm just now researching nuclear power and have never used that yet) but just curious if anyone else uses 100% solar power. Right now I am 100% solar, with 262 solar panels in my main base alone (221 accumulators). I like that it's "free", lower pollution, and unlimited. But it takes up a huge amount of space and takes a lot more maintenance to upgrade so I have power 24 hours a day.

I'm starting to want to go back to steam power since it takes far less space and maintenance to maintain, but does chew up coal.

Just curious.

[Fel]

Most people going for mega bases tend to pick the full solar route since it is the one that has the least impact on your UPS (and that matters more than anything else like cost to build or fuel costs).

Outside of those, it is usual to at least have some form of backup either with boilers or nuclear "just in case", especially if using a lot of laser turrets because they chew through your power rapidly and if it happens during the night you can end up having serious problems if all of a sudden in the middle of defending the whole base goes black and tens of behemoth bitters and spitters swarm inside your walls.

If you want to transition out of solar, usually you would want to go for solid fuel (instead of coal) or directly into nuclear power if you are advanced enough because of the sheer amount of power those can produce with the right setup and with very little "fuel" costs.

[Jupiter3927]

Steam power is great.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1789852330

[DCYW]

Have you heard of the Solaris Steam Achievement.?
You are on way towards it.

[brian_va]

currently all solar, but using the advanced solar mod and mk2 stuff it takes 1/5 the space, but all the stuff costs about 5x as much, so seemed a decent tradeoff.

edit: solar tends to work out better from a fps/ups perspective, it treats all the panels as 1

[Synka]

I used to go full Solar in mid to late game, simply because you can let a production constantly make more solar and some robots construct more when you need it, then forgett about it and you're fine
But I started using Nuclear power now. First of, a decent sized reactor with 6-8 cores can output 4 GW basically forever, it will take days until your uranium comes even close to running out. And secondly, it is a lot more resource/space efficient than solar. I played lots of Deathworld on 300% enemies, and as you can guess space is vital here

P.S.: I usually stick to steam until I can go Nuclear now, but when you have 60-80 steam engines running it can become difficult to fend off all the biters. You got to find a balance between production and pollution, at some point you will need more ammo than you can make with the energy you have.

[knighttemplar1960]

I don't. Solar takes up a LOT of space for the amount of power it generates. I start with 20 boilers then lay out enough solar to supplement the growing base until I can get nuclear going. After than I will use solar to power mining outposts that aren't connected to my main base with power poles.

[HeTiCu7]

I have a mega-power plant of steam & boilers that I feed with solid fuel made by coal liquefaction. Then I got into solar power and eventually used that exclusively for smelting plant setups at the ore fields, keeping the steam engines for the main mfg plant. This way I don't have to run more power poles out to the further and further smelting plants.

I toyed with the idea of dismantling the power plant but found that I still liked the process of the coal liquefaction, so I downsized the power plant to ~half and added some solar/accumulator grids to the main plant location as supplementary/backup support for the power plant. I like variety. :) And, the solar grid has saved production a couple of times when I accidentally let one of the coal fields run dry and solid fuel production fell a bit.

Haven't gotten into the nuclear thing yet. Maybe some day.

[The_Mell]

Originally posted by Frost:

Right now I am 100% solar, with 262 solar panels in my main base alone (221 accumulators).

Ah, back in the days when i was quite new to Factorio and thought similar...

Nowadays my first solar blueprint usually looks like this:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1964754582

[Grumpy Old Gamer]

I use 100% coal/solid fuel power. I built a 360MW coal plant just for that purpose. You know, because ♥♥♥♥ those alien scum their lungs and their future needs for fossil fuels.

https://factorioprints.com/view/-LyDK0jWSRyg8dMSgD7h

[influx]

I sort-of intend to do that at some point. In my case I'm going for a megafactory, and I've found nuclear power to be really useful while scaling up the factory. Takes a bit more time to setup in the beginning but in my experience less time to add another 5 GW of power when you need it. This is only more efficient if you have all the parts such as tens of reactors already stored and available. When I'm satisfied or nearing completion I might switch over to full solar for better performance. Currently have 64k solar panels in use generating 3.84GW good for about 33.7% of my energy production.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1964857623
When I'm looking at the space my solar farm takes up, I'm quite sure I'm saving switching to full solar for last.

[Drum]

I always make a 4-row-boiler powerplant at the start of a new world:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1905666968

After a while it becomes obsolete when i switch to solar. I use mods which enable using higher tier solar panels so they don't take up as much space (even with bots i can't be bothered to place tens of thousands of solar panels).

Often i create 1 nuclear plant for the fun of it in distant outposts.

[rando rambo]

Currently full solar with coal backup.
Going solar made me realize how under powered my base was.

"satisfaction" was in the red
"production" was full green.

I thought it ment i was close to power limit. but still creating enough.
Put down some solar and accumulators, and had to find out why accumulators, wern't accumulating.

Think my base is working a lot faster now with 1k solar panels and 450 accumulators.
water pumps for my 4 steam engines only activate if accumulators drop to 5%

[THE kilroy]

Each power source has its benefits and costs.

Coal steam engines. Pro: low tech small investment easy understanding, anywhere near water. Cons: requires water and coal, produces pollution.

Solid fuel steam engines: pro: mostly low tech easy to understand, unlimited fuel sources. Cons:.requires oil and some oil teh and water. Produces pollution.

Solar: pros: no pollution,predictable, easy to expand, easy to understand, steel is highest tech, best on ups. Cons: investment cost, takes space, usually done with robots.

Nuclear: pros. Easiest to scale ie 10gw is way easier with reactors than anything else. Smallest space per gw. Cons: research cost, infrastructure for fuel rods, initial investment to build, lots of water.

Each has its place

[DCYW]

Originally posted by THE kilroy:

Each power source has its benefits and costs.

Coal steam engines. Pro: low tech small investment easy understanding, anywhere near water. Cons: requires water and coal, produces pollution.

Solid fuel steam engines: pro: mostly low tech easy to understand, unlimited fuel sources. Cons:.requires oil and some oil teh and water. Produces pollution.

Solar: pros: no pollution,predictable, easy to expand, easy to understand, steel is highest tech, best on ups. Cons: investment cost, takes space, usually done with robots.

Nuclear: pros. Easiest to scale ie 10gw is way easier with reactors than anything else. Smallest space per gw. Cons: research cost, infrastructure for fuel rods, initial investment to build, lots of water.

Each has its place

When playing with mods, pollution spreading can be solved by using air purifiers which reduces pollutants instead of complete removal because the game won't be fun if there are no biters around at all.

[impetus_maximus]

Originally posted by THE kilroy:

Solar: pros: no pollution,predictable, easy to expand, easy to understand, steel is highest tech, best on ups. Cons: investment cost, takes space, usually done with robots.

creating batteries and other items is far from 'green'.