How to generate electricity for Aquilo space platforms?

[Falesz]

Hey all,
I finally got around to designing a space platform to take me to Aquilo and eventually refined the design enough so I could get there.. but then the space platform just gets completely stranded because my Rare quality solar panels aren't generating enough electricity in orbit of Aquilo.

I considered using steam power to make use of all the ice in space, but neither boilers nor heating towers can be built in space.

I want to avoid Nuclear power because of the wasting of fuel. There was a thread about that somewhere here a few weeks ago. Wasting Uranium fuel cells isn't something I would ever care about on Nauvis, but in space where my space platforms can potentially spend LONG amounts of time waiting on the "All requests satisfied" conditions that could be a problem. So long story short: nuclear power is not renewable and therefore I would like to avoid it unless I absolutely have no other viable options.

Fusion power is.. not unlocked yet.

So what am I supposed to do here? Is there some other way to make Steam in space other than boilers? Or am I just supposed to spam as many high quality Solar panels as my factory can churn out until electricity demands are met? I suspect even that isn't a permanent solution because of the whole Shattered planet thingy in my far future, where as far as I can tell solar power becomes completely useless.

[Taco Terry]

I just attach a decider to a reactor and read its heat and fuel. When its heat goes below 525 and no fuel is in the reactor, it puts one cell in. My ship also has solar, so it only uses the reactor when it is going to Aquilo.

[不思議種]

My Aquilo ship seems to idle at ~2MW without any efficiency modules (speed ftw). That's roughly an hour per fuel cell if using one reactor. Add a second and you get two hours per cell or 100 hours per stack. For how long do you plan for it to idle at Aquilo?

[Superguru]

Originally posted by Hurkyl:

(sending up the Uranium itself, both the 235 and 258 needed, might be a better option)

You can send 10 fuel cells or 20 U235/U238 which also makes 10 fuel cells with iron from space or 200 uranium ore which also makes 20 U235/U238 for 10 fuel cells.
To get more out of it send uranium ore and do the processing in orbit with productivity modules. Recycle burned out fuel cells for more savings.

Epic productivity modules 3 (+19%) would give these results for 200 uranium ore:
200 ore -> 27.6 U235/U238 (+38%) -> 24.3 fuel cells (+76%)
24.3 burned fuel cells -> 20.12 U238
Plus some gains from kovarex enrichment.
That way you can get 70-75% back to make new fuel to make it last 4 times longer. Nuclear power covers the power bill easily.

[Professor H. Farnsworth]

You're supposed to use nuclear power pretty early.. Solar panels is something you do at the beginning when you just need to get off Nauvis.
Once you're off Nauvis you ought to redesign your spaceship to be more efficient, less space consuming, faster at making ammo and including a nuclear reactor which you upgrade to a Fusion reactor

Originally posted by Superguru:

Originally posted by Hurkyl:

(sending up the Uranium itself, both the 235 and 258 needed, might be a better option)

You can send 10 fuel cells or 20 U235/U238 which also makes 10 fuel cells with iron from space or 200 uranium ore which also makes 20 U235/U238 for 10 fuel cells.
To get more out of it send uranium ore and do the processing in orbit with productivity modules. Recycle burned out fuel cells for more savings.

Epic productivity modules 3 (+19%) would give these results for 200 uranium ore:
200 ore -> 27.6 U235/U238 (+38%) -> 24.3 fuel cells (+76%)
24.3 burned fuel cells -> 20.12 U238
Plus some gains from kovarex enrichment.
That way you can get 70-75% back to make new fuel to make it last 4 times longer. Nuclear power covers the power bill easily.

This assumes you have access to Gleba which most people do not in the beginning. It also assumes people actually bother with Productivity 3 and not just "le sigh.. Gleba ♥♥♥♥, no thanks".

200 ores is not even remotely enough to kickstart Kovarex enrichment, it takes on average 5714 ores to kickstart the Kovarex Enrichment process. Yes, you totally COULD do this if you send up a batch of 40 ores to kick start the process in which case 200 ores would be ~274 U238 and ~2 U238 which you can convert in a Kovarex Enrichment It would take 3 Kovarex to get 44 Kovarex (enough that you won't need to run Kovarex Enrichment for another 44 crafts) and would spend 6.72 U238

Meaning you got 267 U238 and 46 U235 (far cry from the 19:1 ratio you need).

Now that makes 14 Fuel Cell crafts (140 Cells) for a total of 246.4 Fuel Cells.

That means of your initial stock of 267 is all gone (more or less) and you are down to 32 + 40 U235 (we need to stockpile at least 40 though).

Of these 246.4 Fuel Cells we can regain 3 U238 49.28 times or 263.15 That means that you had a loss off 1.44% :).

It is always a loss of 1.44% more or less so, in all practical applications this process of 200 ores (provided that you brought up the initial 40 U235 to kick start the process) would last you for about 3.2 times before Kovarex needs to be redone. However, that's 787 Fuel Cells and something like 157568 seconds or 1.82 days 1 day, 19hrs, 40mins, 48s

When people say "nuclear is too expensive" that's people whom are bad players..

Nuclear in space can become a near infinite power source with 25% productivity modules as you can regain almost 1:! U238 than you put in (remember it's 50% on crafts so it's 19:1 to make 20 of these 20 fuel cells you can regain 18 U238 - it took you 19 to make it.).

[The_Pastmaster]

I put up tanks to store the steam. Steam doesn't go cold and if the reactor runs out of fuel, I still have a sizable surplus of steam to drain before power becomes an issue.

[malogoss]

Just for fun, I made a blueprint in the last few days. It's a space platform that is built only out of items of basic quality (absolutely nothing uncommon or better). It's built to survive the trip to Aquilo and back and its only power source is basic solar panels. The accumulators lose maybe 1/3 of their charge at worse, but once at Aquilo, things slowly settle down, production decreases, and accumulators are back at full charge within 2 minute or less.

I throttle fuel going into thrusters, I use T1 efficiency modules in everything and I use the hub as a buffer for many resources gathered in space. It does not import resources from planets to survive. I don't buffer the asteroid chunks in the hub, they require too much storage room, but my collectors use logic and are my chunk buffers, for all 3 types of chunks.

If you have access to at least some rare quality items or better, mostly solar panels, chemical plants, electric furnaces and T3 assemblers, then it is somewhat forgiving and you should be able to get there.

Beyond Aquilo, it's a different game and fusion solves power on my platforms.

Good luck.

[Lordly Cinder]

Originally posted by Hurkyl:

Originally posted by RiO:

Afaik it doesn't; and is unique to Volcanus.

I was just going to check and can confirm, it is unique to Vulcanus. So no sulfur power. :(

Why is this? You just cant convert it in space? Sadly that was my plan but Ive only just touched vulcan.

[Falesz]

Thank you all for all the answers!
Considering everything, I accepted the way to go is nuclear. So I designed a circuit-controlled nuclear powerplant and set up all stations to kick out the platform if Uranium fuel cells start running low and set up an interrupt that immediately sends the platform to Nauvis to refill.
Haven't tried it yet, I really hope it works.
If it does, there is no way I'm retrofitting this with fusion power. This bad boy will just keep running with nuclear for as long as it isn't made completely obsolete by newer, more efficient platforms.

[Esxhaton]

Originally posted by Lordly Cinder:

Originally posted by Hurkyl:

I was just going to check and can confirm, it is unique to Vulcanus. So no sulfur power. :(

Why is this? You just cant convert it in space? Sadly that was my plan but Ive only just touched vulcan.

Some recipes can only be crafted on specific planets or space, like space science for instance

[Citizen Joe]

Nuclear power

[Quillithe]

Originally posted by Esxhaton:

Originally posted by Lordly Cinder:

Why is this? You just cant convert it in space? Sadly that was my plan but Ive only just touched vulcan.

Some recipes can only be crafted on specific planets or space, like space science for instance

Yeah I discovered this too - it feels odd because most of those are very obvious products like special planet buildings.

But it would be pretty broken as a self sustaining space source of power I guess.

[Nhillism]

I haven't tried it yet, but can't you ship barrels of heavy oil up to a platform to kickstart coal liquefaction? Obviously not the most efficient power source though.

[Hurkyl]

Originally posted by Nhillism:

I haven't tried it yet, but can't you ship barrels of heavy oil up to a platform to kickstart coal liquefaction? Obviously not the most efficient power source though.

Can't place a boiler (or heating tower) in space, so making solid fuel or rocket fuel doesn't help.

[SharkPlush]

Originally posted by Chindraba:

Originally posted by Csöpper:

So long story short: nuclear power is not renewable and therefore I would like to avoid it unless I absolutely have no other viable options.

As I understand the situation, and the game's workings, you have no other viable options at this point.

You can, however, use any number of methods to avoid wasting the fuel cells. There have been many variations discussed, even before the extra capabilities of 2.0 were introduced. They settle out into two camps basically. Use the full power from the fuel cells and store the excess as steam. Monitor the steam level and add more fuel when it gets low. Or, monitor the reactor's temperature and only add fuel when that gets low.

Personally, as you note for Nauvis, I've never worried about the regulation of fuel cell usage, so I don't have the systems for it in my head. Still, until you unlock fusion power, you really do have no other viable options.

I came up with a very simple solution: 1 combinator with reactor and steam storage inputs, output controls grabber. if steam is < %50 AND fuel cell = 0, activating the fuel cell grabber. The fuel cell 0 condition is because we never want to stack fuel cells in the reactor.

Waiting for the steam to deplete means the reactor has cooled off (or the heat exchangers would not have fallen behind), which is what we want; we want to make power during the time the reactor is just cooling down and there's no fuel in it. I don't know the math but fuel goes significantly farther this way.

[Zhardoz]

I use nuclear on my platform with no problem, they lasts a 4ish hours with 200 barrels. as for the used barrel you can just dump them in space.