Ideal power ratios and boilet/steam setup?

[Squirting Elephant]

Obviously you wanna use as less boilers per steam engine as possible to reduce polution.

I saw an image of someone using tanks between the boilers and steam engine. Does this realle help?

Also how many solar panels do I roughly need to replace a 100% effcient steam engine? I made like hundreds + accumulators but still, I could not turn off more than 8 Steam engines before running into problems... Are solar panels that weak?

Update for ratios:
14 boilers : 10 steam engines (no watertanks)
? panels + ? accs : 10 steam engines

Basic accumulator (acc) charge/Discharge rate is 300 kW maximum.

[Tepidpoem8]

could you tell me how to make plastic bars

[Los]

boilers only produce pollution when they are on and a boiler wont turn on if the water is already at 100 temp

[Jaridan]

14 boilers, 10 steam engines, fully charge/decharge is 100 solarpanels , 84 accs. so a 0.84 ratio between them.

[Squirting Elephant]

Originally posted by wanyfer:

boilers only produce pollution when they are on and a boiler wont turn on if the water is already at 100 temp

But certain setups do seem to require more boilers per steam engine than other setups. Like the way the pipes are placed, parallel vs serial setups, watertanks, etc.

Originally posted by SUN Jaridan:

14 boilers, 10 steam engines, fully charge/decharge is 100 solarpanels , 84 accs. so a 0.84 ratio between them.

Thanks. So I'm gonna need HUGE fields covered with solar panels and accumulators.
If I want to replace ~80 steam engines, that would be around 800 panels + a ton of accs... Making them is easy, finding enough space for them and protecting them with lasers (which require more power of course) is more the problem.

[shanethegooner]

I always go with 10 engines for every 14 boilers as well, seems to work perfectly.

[blueimpb]

Originally posted by Silver:

Obviously you wanna use as less boilers per steam engine as possible to reduce polution.

I don't think this is true. The boilers only consume fuel until they've heated the water to 100 degrees; and the water only cools down as the engines consume it. So there shouldn't be any downside to building more boilers than you need.

You do need a lot of solar cells, but hundreds to replace 8 engines sounds terribly wrong. The math for the solar cells is easy: just look at your max consumption (you can see the power stats by clicking on any power pole) and divide the megawatts by .06. The math for the accumulators is much harder because they not only have a maximum charge, but also a maximum *drain* -- typically I find I need about as many as I have accumulators.

[Jaridan]

i think you misquoted me, 100solar panels do not, by a long shot, replace 10 boilers, i just put it there for easy measuring between accs/solarpanels. A solar panel generates, on average (aka over 24h (ingame)) ~42w. Just do the math^^, 100solars = 4,2MW, 10 SE x 550kw = 5,5MW.

I apologize for the misunderstanding.

[Dragorin]

I like to get to solar asap because I dislike the pollution steam causes. I've been using a solar layout that includes a robo port .. I only ever build my layout once and then I let the bots duplicate it. My current game has 3 banks (30) steam engines. I just layed my first two solar fields and now my steam engins only kick on at night. With a 3rd solar field I could turn the steam off totally. My only issue then would be Laser turrets draiing to much power at night. To make sure I don't run out I'd just keep adding more solar fields.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=636256584
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=636256681
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=636256852

ps. this isn't my design I stole it. lol

[AlexMBrennan]

Like the way the pipes are placed, parallel vs serial setups, watertanks, etc.

Watertanks have extremely narrow uses - you basically burn coal now to heat up water which you store, instead of burning coal to heat water when you need it, and without mods I find it difficult to imagine a scenario where that is useful (3x3 a steel chests filled with coal holds far more potentially useable energy than a tank full of 100 deg water).

Generally speaking, the maximum number of engines is determined by the throughput of the pipes and output of the offshore pump. This number appears to be 10.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=636298705
Once you hit that, the easiest way to get more power is to plop down another copy of your engine-boiler assembly - I suppose you could optionally waste a few iron plates to connect them but there really wouldn't be any point.

The number of boilers you need depends on the throughput - if you only use a small fraction of the potential throughput then water will "stand" in the boiler for a longer time, and each boiler will be able to heat up the water by a greater amount. It seems that the number of boilers needed to run 10 engines at maximum capacity is 14 - any less than that, and water temperature will fall below 100 when the engines are at 100% load.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=636298878

So there shouldn't be any downside to building more boilers than you need.

You need to build those boilers, you need to power the inserters supplying them, you need to more space for your factory which means you need more turrets to defend it, etc.

[DunkleUrax]

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

You need to build those boilers, you need to power the inserters supplying them, you need to more space for your factory which means you need more turrets to defend it, etc.

Just a footnote (Alex prob already knows, but since we're on the topic),
You can use BurnerInserters (they are inefficient and would likely cause more pollution, but they work) to feed your boilers.
Really the only reason to use this is if worry about the downward spiral that happens if you start running into BrownOuts (less power available means your electric inserters run slower, which could result in even less power getting generated if you can't feed your boilers faster enough..etc..)

You can also daisey-chain coal through boilers.. that is, Belt->inserter->boiler->inserter->boiler (so on), to relay Coal around.

[Warlord]

I experimented a while back, tried to get more boilers/steam engines in one single line. I can't recall what I ended up at, but I found that apparently every steam engine takes a bit of water our of a pipe as it runs through it. And since pipes have a limit of 10 water/s passing through, means you can run out of water before it reaches the far boilers.

I tried using more water pipes to "infuse" more water into the line, but all it did was seem to reset the temperature of the water, wasting all the effort.

[Flip]

Just a question, apart from annoying the local alien population is there any downside to pollution? I ask because if it is only aliens you annoy, then wouldn't it be more cost effective just build a few more turrent emplacements than a large solar field?

[hapes]

Here's the summary of power production:

1> 1 Offshore Pump can handle 10 Steam Engines. 10 Steam Engines require 14 boilers to keep the water hot all the way to the end. You can do 13 boilers, but that's at 99% efficiency. I do 1 pump, with a pipe off, that splits into two pipes. Each of those two pipes feeds 7 boilers, which then feed 5 steam engines. Once your factory gets large, you'll need several sets of these (I'm up to 5 or 6 sets and I've only just researched Advanced Oil Production. I'm going to build up my resource production and start building solar panels and accumulators next).

2> Solar power can replace steam during the day. HOWEVER, the game takes power from Steam before Accumulators. So, if you build a ton of accumulators, they'll fill up during the day from the solar power, and then the steam engines will take over at night. There are ways to set it up so that the accumulators take over first, look on the factorio wiki for power production, and then there are links from there.

[hapes]

I'll reply to Sir Nevan III Esq. separately.

The only downside to pollution is annoying biters, yes. But it increases their evolution factor, which means they get nastier faster. Once the evolution factor gets high enough, you better make sure your defenses are rock solid, or you'll lose. I haven't hit end game since before 12.x, so I haven't experienced Behemoths yet, but I bet they're a lot harder to kill than even the Big Biters. I read somewhere that you need 3 rows of laser turrets to defend against a full evolution attack. Are you ready for that? I know I'm not.

[zytukin]

If I recall correctly, Solar panels and accumulators are really low on the list of stuff for biters/spitters to attack, so unless in the way, they will leave them alone. So don't really need defenses for them and can place large fields of them away from your factory.

Pollution producing things are the highest on the list followed by either turrents or radars.

A radar will get attacked if placed near a nest even if there is no pollution.
Solar panels and accumulators will not.