Coal PowerPlant Setup help

[Grobies-UK1]

Hi folks,
I am pretty new to Satisfactory and have been figuring out a lot of stuff. the one thing I am struggling with is a good coal powerplant setup. I have set up a row of powerplants and figured out how to get coal to all of them, but then one thing letting me down is the water. I have 4 water pumps in a pool of water with 2 covering each half of the plant. The plants are connected on a single line pipe. I just cant seem to maintain water flow to all the power plants all the time. Does anyone have a schematic for a good setup or can point me in the right direction please?

Many thanks

[Shane]

i just use 1xwater pump to 3xplants (all fully power shard up) BUT THIS IS NOT BEST SETUP

[xxCOOPSxx]

OK we need more details on the layout. How many coal plants are being fed by these pumps. How do you have them piped in. Remember pipes have a flow limit so you need make sure you not trying to pump more water down the pipe than it can carry. So can we have detailed information on the layout and setup you have as most likely its a flow issue

[Dragorin]

You didn't tell us how many coal powerplants your trying to feed water too. Big thing to keep in mind with coal power is how much water you can move with the pipes you have. To start off you only have water pipes that can hold 300 water. Two water extractor plants with no over/under clocking push 240 wpm. Each coal power plant needs 45 wpm, so two water extractors can power 5.33 coal plants.

Personally, I hook up 3 water extractors and underclock them so each pushes 100 wpm to fill the 300pm pipe and then I can power 6 coal plants off that. With some fancy pipe work you could not over/under clock and run 8 coal plants but that gets a bit tricky with how you have to run the pipes.

[Grobies-UK1]

Ok, I may be over killing it. 😳 I have 12 plants in a row . 2 pumps feeding a single pipeline flowing in front of the plants and terminating in the 6th one. The others splice into the single line. The other 2 pumps feed the remaining 6 in the same way. On a different single pipeline. Hope this helps

[Rakzoid]

With 4 waterpumps at 80% you can feed 8 coal powerplants. (2 pumps feeding 4 powerplants on a single pipe line.) So if there is some water flow problems maybe you are transporting the water higher then 10 meters up? Also not clear the amount of powerplants you try to feed with 4 water pumps.
If you use power shards this setup changes of course towards the setup Shane suggests :)

[Shane]

yea mine sucks but i dont really build big lmao

[sendjes]

Have a read, and then come back if in doubt:
https://satisfactory.fandom.com/wiki/Coal_Generator

[xxCOOPSxx]

So 2 water extractors feeding 6 coal plants right?? That would be a lack of water if you not overclocking those 2 pumps. 2 water extractors at 100% produce 240 water. However 6 coal plants at 100% would need 270 water a minute. Your not putting enough water in to that system thus coal plants going to run out of water and shutdown

[Dragorin]

One final comment, with coal power plants it's my opinion that underclocking your water extractors is a better plan than overclocking them. As that's more power your coal power plants are pushing to your factory over all rather than burning that power to produce power. The more you overclock the more power it costs to run the machine, same for underclocking the more you can underclock the less power you need over all.

Good example of this is in constructors. Sure you can overclock a constructor to produce more items per minute. However there comes a point where two constructors will produce the same or more items per minute for less power than one overclocked machine will produce.

[Capt. W. Schwartz]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2548198318

This is how you supply 8 generators with 3 extractors.

It is best (least headaches) to follow 8:3 or 8:4(@75%), when setting up coal plants, due the the ease of expansion.
-
Never power shard your Generators.

[xxCOOPSxx]

Originally posted by Dragorin:

One final comment, with coal power plants it's my opinion that underclocking your water extractors is a better plan than overclocking them. As that's more power your coal power plants are pushing to your factory over all rather than burning that power to produce power. The more you overclock the more power it costs to run the machine, same for underclocking the more you can underclock the less power you need over all.

Good example of this is in constructors. Sure you can overclock a constructor to produce more items per minute. However there comes a point where two constructors will produce the same or more items per minute for less power than one overclocked machine will produce.

Yeah i agree with this defo in early game. Better to build more and underclock them to get the rate you need than build less and overclock. Late game not so much an issue once you got big power setup and have loads of excess power

[Rayquaza608]

As far as a coal setup goes, i've been using a setup with 3 extractors to 8 coal plants with out overclocking, i've only overclocked a MK2 miner to ensure that i can feed 16 coal plants with this setup by overfilling a MK3 belt line. I have the 2 mainline pipes refeed eachother to keep the pipes full for each set of 8 generators.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2661660252
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2661660641
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2661661154
The pipe work for distributing the water to the coal plants required a bit of work, with temporary platforms and pipe bases to get everything setup how i wanted.

[Grobies-UK1]

Thanks all for the feedback and suggestions I'll give it another go

[Grobies-UK1]

@Rayquaza608 this looks awesome , don't suppose you have a schematic that shows the build? 😇

[Padds]

60 coal feeds 4 plants, use 2 water
120 coal feeds 8 plants use 3 water

nothing is overclocked

i run my water pipe along the line of plants attaching one pump to either end and the 3rd if present just plugged into the middle somewhere