Tip for getting the most from steam turbines

[MARTFONGER]

See my comment below with screenshot, this apparently does not appear to be true at least under 400F.

Put a thermo sensor in the steam chamber set to run at above 420F and attach it to a buffer gate then the turbines. Play with the time on the buffer gate and watch the turbine closely.

During the entire time it is running, it should put out 850 watts, adjust the buffer until it stops running before the power drops below 850.

[Angpaur]

Great tip to waste magma heat.

[Peez Machine]

I'm not sure what this setup is supposed to accomplish. If the goal is to prevent the turbine from running when it would generate less than the full 850 watts, then why not just hook it to thermo sensor tuned to 200C (392F) (maybe filter it for stability)?

[MARTFONGER]

If anyone has any doubts, read the steam turbine article on the wiki.

[Angpaur]

Originally posted by $11 MILLION A MINUTE:

If anyone has any doubts, read the steam turbine article on the wiki.

Or maybe you should explain why you think you are proposing a good solution?

Because right now every person, who knows something about the steam turbines, is clearly aware that letting steam go past 200C is wasteful and if you want to get more power then you should put there another turbine and heat usage will be optimized and in the end you will get more power than 850W from same amount of heat.

[Shame]

Would make more sense to have it run between 390F and 400F for approximately most efficiency, but that entirely depends on what you place the turbines on top of. If it's magma, you can use doors to either open/close ports or have doors which are opened and stay in vacuum once the steam temperature reaches above 400F, and close to allow heat exchange between the steam chamber and magma heat once the temperature. Then having the turbines themselves connected via automation wire to a smart battery to run based on power need rather than the thermal sensors. This would be a temporary setup anyway for a few hundred cycles unless you are taming a volcano, which would likely be done differently anyway.

If the aim is instead to keep a room at certain temperature and it's going to heat up a lot and you don't care how much power you are wasting, then your solution sounds more along the lines of need, though even then I usually just let turbines suck up as much temperature as possible in those cases, they do gain heat deletion efficiency running with higher temperature steam up to the aforementioned temp if I've read up on it correctly.

[MARTFONGER]

Originally posted by Shame:

Would make more sense to have it run between 390F and 400F for approximately most efficiency, but that entirely depends on what you place the turbines on top of. If it's magma, you can use doors to either open/close ports or have doors which are opened and stay in vacuum once the steam temperature reaches above 400F, and close to allow heat exchange between the steam chamber and magma heat once the temperature. Then having the turbines themselves connected via automation wire to a smart battery to run based on power need rather than the thermal sensors. This would be a temporary setup anyway for a few hundred cycles unless you are taming a volcano, which would likely be done differently anyway.

If the aim is instead to keep a room at certain temperature and it's going to heat up a lot and you don't care how much power you are wasting, then your solution sounds more along the lines of need, though even then I usually just let turbines suck up as much temperature as possible in those cases, they do gain heat deletion efficiency running with higher temperature steam up to the aforementioned temp if I've read up on it correctly.

If you set it lower in a standard aquatuner setup, you will see a dip in power output. If you set it just a bit higher, you won't see 750 or lower watts before shutoff.

[AlexMBrennan]

OK, and what do you hope to achieve by doing that? What difference does it make if the turbine runs all day at 50%, or for half the day at 100% thanks to your brilliant automation?

You are not going to get any more power out of it by pausing the turbine instead of allowing it to run at half capacity.

[bwhitejr]

Originally posted by $11 MILLION A MINUTE:

If anyone has any doubts, read the steam turbine article on the wiki.

Many of us have. And from the wiki:
"If the Steam is above 200 °C, block the inputs to just two to maximize power generation while minimizing steam consumption and heat generation of the Turbine"
I have over 2000 hours in ONI, and this has served me well, I don't play for max efficiency and high levels of min/maxing. Steam turbines are just part of my power grid, I don't rely on any one source. I often build one turbine/aquatuner for a simple cooling loop, not power. That's what turbines are best for - deleting heat. My bases tend to end up with multiple turbines scattered around.
And, a power management station works well for inconsistent steam pressure, if you can afford the refined metal.
Play how you want. Sharing tips here is fine, but there's more than one way to do pretty much anything in the game.

[chaney]

Just to add something to argue about, sometimes when folks type "power" they should instead type "energy" ...

[MARTFONGER]

Originally posted by chaney:

Just to add something to argue about, sometimes when folks type "power" they should instead type "energy" ...

Yet another oni thread that makes me wish I had paid more attention in physics

[chaney]

I can blah blah a bit about it if you like, just ask. It isn't that complicated to get the basics and helps build more effectively. I don't want to hijack the thread without you wanting that to happen though. There are some good real life engineers on the forum.

[Shame]

Originally posted by $11 MILLION A MINUTE:

If you set it lower in a standard aquatuner setup, you will see a dip in power output. If you set it just a bit higher, you won't see 750 or lower watts before shutoff.

It's not about the wattage that is drawn in the moment that would matter in a standard aquatuner setup if you're doing cooling and trying to max out power recouping. What matters here is the total energy output over time. Because more heat per watt is deleted, as you let the turbine only work at higher temperatures, the total energy recouped is lower and you have to spend more energy to cool the same amount of k/Dtus with the aquatuner. This does imply that limits to higher temps could have further cooling potential as the aquatuner could run for longer without stopping.

So you may be asking then what is the point of having turbines in a large power setup run at higher temp steam if you just waste more heat for the same amount of power? That would be space efficiency. If you want more power immediately, it makes more sense to let 5 turbines to run at 200C steam draw than them doing so at 130C steam to conserve heat per watt, as each turbine can then produce more power in that compact space, giving you more power to work with immediately.

I suppose that does also imply that a dual chamber design could be employed, high 200C temp and low 130C turbine setup, with the latter working first and the high temp kicking in if the 130C is not enough. You could also have the 130C chamber become a 200C one if even that whole thing isn't enough. But that still would mean lesser immediate power provision as the 130C chamber would take time to get to 200C and increasing the likelihood of brownouts. But it all really depends on your total power draw at the end of the day. So whatever's your favorite approach is really what you should go for, my general recommendation is no temperature limiter for AQ/ST setup and 200C steam turbine setup for large scale geothermal power provision, that seems like the most efficiently simplistic general approach.

[MARTFONGER]

That is the thing though... even a tiny drop in power from the UI seems to be 100-200 watts, (and the middle range being around 325-350) running only at 850 appears to be way more power efficient and use less heat for the same power as long as it is only barely above max. This is like if you trap a volcano or whatever and want the max amount of power from it.

[Moriibund]

Originally posted by $11 MILLION A MINUTE:

That is the thing though... even a tiny drop in power from the UI seems to be 100-200 watts, (and the middle range being around 325-350) running only at 850 appears to be way more power efficient and use less heat for the same power as long as it is only barely above max. This is like if you trap a volcano or whatever and want the max amount of power from it.

The thing is, you seem to be overly concerned with the power output, but, the steam turbine isn't used for it's power output. It is used to delete heat. If you want efficient power, look to a petroleum or sour gas boiler.

[Shame]

Originally posted by $11 MILLION A MINUTE:

That is the thing though... even a tiny drop in power from the UI seems to be 100-200 watts, (and the middle range being around 325-350) running only at 850 appears to be way more power efficient and use less heat for the same power as long as it is only barely above max. This is like if you trap a volcano or whatever and want the max amount of power from it.

No, this is again, not correct. I suspect either you are not communicating well what you're trying to bring forward or you don't understand. Wattage at any given point on a AT/ST setup for cooling here becomes irrelevant when it comes to power used for efficiency's sake of cooling things with the aquatuner. Why? Because the heat deleted will actually be about the same regardless. The turbine will just run less, so the amount of power generated over time will be almost the exact same. I mentioned before that the higher the drawn steam, the more heat is deleted, however...

I went back to oni-db as I used that for calculations before, and I must have miscalculated or misinterpreted the last time I checked. Apparently there is some heat use efficiency on 200C over 130C instead, but that is very miniscule.

130C steam turbine steam draw results in
+283.22 watts per second
-263.28 kDtus per second

roughly 1.0757 watts per kDtu

200C steam turbine steam draw results in
+850 watt per second
-789.83 kDtus per second

roughly 1.07618 watts per kDtu

Something else I forgot to account for is the battery power bleed over time, and since the 130C is longer running while the 200C is more instantaneous, the watts per k/Dtu might get a little higher for 200C yet again, but I still doubt its significance. Also keep in mind the k/Dtus lost here account for net heat lost, as there's some generated by the turbine running as well, don't know how much that would impact the overall efficiency. But efficiency can also be influenced by the activation timing and runtime of the Aquatuner, so at this point I think it's safe to assume yet again that 200C steam is good for power in terms of space efficiency if you use it for geothermal power form magma or nuclear reactor, but for AQ/ST setup it really doesn't matter.