Sustainable Power

[Zane Thanatos]

What's the trick to sustainable power? I seem to start having coal issues around day 100, and since geyers aren't on all the time it doesn't seem like I can supplement iwth NG.

[SamuraiJones]

They want to keep us struggling for power. Those boys at Klei will do whatever it takes to keep a dupe down...

I think the devs are working hard to make sure we've never got an excess of power. You gotta squeeze ever drop out of ever source you can find, and you'll probably still not have enough.

The NG geysers generate quite a bit, and you can get alot out of hatches if you can keep em fed. There's a crazy amount of power in petrolium, but that'll eventually run out... the oil wells still give you quite a bit though. I'm sure there's a tremendous amount of power if you tap into the magma with a steam generator, but i've no idea how you could dissipate that much heat.

You can get some out of volcanoes, but it's alot of work for a very small payout (the new radiant pipes might let us increase the efficency there, but i haven't played enough to find out). I'm experimenting with solar panels now, but it looks like those will suck up alot of real-estate. Plus you gotta protect em, and probably get dupes to sweep em after a meteor shower.

As mad as it may sound... if you've got enough water and food, having a class of dupe that just spends every day in a hamster wheel might not be that crazy.

[leaderdog]

would be nice if you could lock or put hatches in hamster wheels. They seem to run around all day anyways, may as well utilize that energy. ;)

[Setokaiva]

Originally posted by rpierce:

would be nice if you could lock or put hatches in hamster wheels. They seem to run around all day anyways, may as well utilize that energy. ;)

Wow. Good sir, I think that's the best idea I've ever heard. Why can't we get animals to run on hamster wheels and make power for us? That could be a really useful morph.

[Ζiоqch]

Originally posted by Setokaiva:

Originally posted by rpierce:

would be nice if you could lock or put hatches in hamster wheels. They seem to run around all day anyways, may as well utilize that energy. ;)

Wow. Good sir, I think that's the best idea I've ever heard. Why can't we get animals to run on hamster wheels and make power for us? That could be a really useful morph.

Rope on a food will do.

[SKull]

You need to be minimalist I think. Think small and build smaller, at least with NG and coal. That way a geyser and a natural gas generator or your coal reserves can last quite a while. Not forever though, no matter how small you think.
But the best, and dirtiest, option right now is probably oil generators. They can last you for a long, long time. I got to about cycle 700 before getting bored on the last patch, and was endlessly far away from running out of oil then. I had barely drained one of about 20 massive pools of oil at that point. I had built two coal generators, which was one too many I discovered, and one NG generator, which was sort of the right amount for the number of geysers I had found, which was one. But the oil lasts forever and ever.

Haven't tried solar yet though. But if that is efficient it might be better than oil. No chance of running out of sun typically.

[Raz]

I generally don't run into power issues until I try to get my farms going, and certain plants need light all the time to grow.
I like to research the big batteries as soon as I can, then have 1 guy on the wheel pretty much all day till I find some coal
With coal, I just turn it on till it fills up the batteries, then switch the machine off till I need it again. (it still burns coal even when its idle, which i've always thought was a little dumb)

[Solaire]

I found a cool steam vent. Unlimited water, so i use electrolytes and hydrogen plants.

[doomagent13]

The first thing you should do is maximize the efficiency of any fuel-consuming power sources by connecting them to smart batteries, unless you need to make sure something doesn't back up. (Such as hydrogen from electrolyzers) I don't know how many hatches you would need per coal generator to run them constantly, but 24 hatches is more than enough for 12 coal generators that only run when needed to keep batteries charged. Solar panels on the surface can produce plenty of power, but at a minimum require cleaning after meteor showers. Combining magma and oil can produce massive amounts of natural gas, although managing the heat can be somewhat hard.

All this said, what is truly sustainable at least somewhat comes down to what geysers you have access to, and how you define sustainability. Solar panels on the surface don't need any additional material once set up, but you have to manually order dupes to clear regolith after meteor showers. Food for hatches (particularly stone hatches) is likely to not be a problem within any reasonable length of playtime, so coal generators only need occasional input from you to manage the number of hatches, although dupes will spend some time each cycle caring for the hatches. With a magma volcano and a sustainable source of oil, you can potentially set up a fully automatic and sustainable natural gas system. It all comes down to whether you can sustainably meet the requirements for each kind of power source.

[Lantantan]

I'm experimenting with keeping wild-but-fed hatches throughout my entire base. Every room has 4 wild hatches being fed rocks. I keep them wild because grooming is very labour intensive and ungroomed animals produce less than wild ones. (Can I feed them renewable regolith?)

I can currently power 1 coal generater, I hope to eventually power 2. Breeding the hatches from 1 stable takes hundreds of cycles but eventually this system will require only a small amount of hauling. The resulting CO2 output means this could be repeated for slicks and natural gas power, but again, breeding takes long.

[SirFrancisFren]

Smart batteries are your friend. With NG geysers nerfed, the next best thing is to set up an oil boiling system, oil will boil to petroleum and then petroleum to natural gas 1 to 1 to 1, not losing any mass. The Klei forums have some oil boiling builds as the biggest issue is cooling it back down from 539c so it can be pumped.

[SamuraiJones]

Originally posted by Lantantan:

I'm experimenting with keeping wild-but-fed hatches throughout my entire base. Every room has 4 wild hatches being fed rocks. I keep them wild because grooming is very labour intensive and ungroomed animals produce less than wild ones. (Can I feed them renewable regolith?)

I was looking at that too. The database doesn't include that material in their diet. Not sure about stone hatches.

Originally posted by Lantantan:

I can currently power 1 coal generater, I hope to eventually power 2. Breeding the hatches from 1 stable takes hundreds of cycles but eventually this system will require only a small amount of hauling. The resulting CO2 output means this could be repeated for slicks and natural gas power, but again, breeding takes long.

You're gonna need alot of manpower to drag materials around... unless you automate it. A few updates ago, I had a conveyor system for moving coal and hatch food around completely without input from dupes. Worked well unless I ran the batteries out, then it was a crisis.

[profitX10]

I currently use solar power and a mass of batteries, Jettisoning the heat into polluted water that gets filtered using regolith and then generating oxygen using that. I pump the CO2 into space and I am probably going to use the regolith that reaches 300C+ in space as a form of renewable power by dropping it into water and then running it through a steam generator.
I have a duplicant locked in a micro base near space by door controls and just destroy and replace all solar panels that get smucked.