How do you set up a coal power plant effecently?

[Redronapt]

I've been playing the game for a while now and seeing my first world i created it was very inefficient in its coal power plant so i was wondering whats the best way to transport water, have the coal plants arranged etc...

[lpnlizard27]

Coal is much easier to transport than fluids.
Build your generators near the water, and bring them coal.

[Redronapt]

Originally posted by lpnlizard27:

Coal is much easier to transport than fluids.
Build your generators near the water, and bring them coal.

I already know that but what would be the best way to arrange power plants in receiving the water

[lpnlizard27]

Feed from below is my way, but by no means the only way.
Having a small floor below your machines for logistics is very helpful.
In this case we can keep the pipe work both out of the way and tidy at the same time.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2815168121

[Redronapt]

Originally posted by lpnlizard27:

Feed from below is my way, but by no means the only way.
Having a small floor below your machines for logistics is very helpful.
In this case we can keep the pipe work both out of the way and tidy at the same time.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2815168121

wow that looks cool thanks for the info but dont you have to use the pumps often because of the water going up

[lpnlizard27]

No, water extractors give 10 meters of head lift without a pump and this location is actually situated downhill of the water so no pumps required.

[umop-apisdn]

Personally, I underclock my water extractors to 75% and feed one pipe into 2 generators, built on foundations at the edge of the water. Most of the time, I don't need pumps, and the underclocked extractors helps reduce the "jumpstart" power requirements (12.5MW per extractor instead of 20), allowing me to get up and running with a functional amount of coal power that much faster.

I like to start with a bank of 8 generators and 4 water extractors, utilizing a full Mk.1 Miner's output (assuming it's on a pure node).

You can take it a step further, and use 1 water extractor per generator (clocking the extractor to 37.5%, which means each extractor costs 4.17 MW), but that starts becoming space-constrained very quickly if you're at a lake instead of a coastline, and isn't quite enough to power the whole array with a single biomass burner anyway.

To be fair, I don't spend much time on coal, anyway... I do a lot of prep work so that as soon as I get steel running (and feed the Space Elevator), I can move smoothly into oil/fuel operations and get to the "real power". If there's any alt recipe in the game that's "required", it's diluted packaged fuel.

Edited: Math is hard before coffee.

[Redronapt]

Originally posted by umop-apisdn:

Personally, I underclock my water extractors to 75% and feed one pipe into 2 generators, built on foundations at the edge of the water. Most of the time, I don't need pumps, and the underclocked extractors helps reduce the "jumpstart" power requirements (12.5MW per extractor instead of 20), allowing me to get up and running with a functional amount of coal power that much faster.

I like to start with a bank of 8 generators and 4 water extractors, utilizing a full Mk.1 Miner's output (assuming it's on a pure node).

You can take it a step further, and use 1 water extractor per generator (clocking the extractor to 37.5%, which means each extractor costs 4.17 MW), but that starts becoming space-constrained very quickly if you're at a lake instead of a coastline, and isn't quite enough to power the whole array with a single biomass burner anyway.

To be fair, I don't spend much time on coal, anyway... I do a lot of prep work so that as soon as I get steel running (and feed the Space Elevator), I can move smoothly into oil/fuel operations and get to the "real power". If there's any alt recipe in the game that's "required", it's diluted packaged fuel.

Edited: Math is hard before coffee.

oh so you entirely skip the coal process and go for fuel gens? are they more efficent that coal gens or whats the advantages of them?

[umop-apisdn]

Originally posted by Redronapt:

oh so you entirely skip the coal process and go for fuel gens? are they more efficent that coal gens or whats the advantages of them?

No, I don't "skip it entirely"; I use a reasonable amount of coal power to bridge the gap before fuel power... and then I start building a massive power plant.

A pure node of coal produces enough coal to run 8 coal generators, for a total of 600 MW.
A pure oil node produces enough oil to run 13.3_ fuel generators, for a total of 2,000 MW... with neither overclocking nor alternative recipes considered.

With overclocking and a handful of alternative recipes (hinging on the Diluted Packaged Fuel recipe), a single pure oil node can produce almost 10 times as much power as a single pure coal node (using a Mk.1 miner at 100% clock speed)... and coal power is stealing coal from my steel production.

[Redronapt]

Originally posted by umop-apisdn:

Originally posted by Redronapt:

oh so you entirely skip the coal process and go for fuel gens? are they more efficent that coal gens or whats the advantages of them?

No, I don't "skip it entirely"; I use a reasonable amount of coal power to bridge the gap before fuel power... and then I start building a massive power plant.

A pure node of coal produces enough coal to run 8 coal generators, for a total of 600 MW.
A pure oil node produces enough oil to run 13.3_ fuel generators, for a total of 2,000 MW... with neither overclocking nor alternative recipes considered.

With overclocking and a handful of alternative recipes (hinging on the Diluted Packaged Fuel recipe), a single pure oil node can produce almost 10 times as much power as a single pure coal node (using a Mk.1 miner at 100% clock speed)... and coal power is stealing coal from my steel production.

ahhh alright thank you for the math i didnt know how much better the oil is at generating fuel

[umop-apisdn]

Originally posted by Redronapt:

ahhh alright thank you for the math i didnt know how much better the oil is at generating fuel

• Biomass Burner
  
  • Produces up to 30 MW (except the pair built into the HUB, which produce up to 20MW each)
    
  • Consumes up to 4 Solid Biofuel per minute
    I say "up to", because these are the only power producer that will burn slower than full speed, thus only using as much fuel as the power requires.
    
  
  
• Coal Generator
  
  • Produces 75 MW
    
  • Consumes 15 Coal per minute
    
  
  
• Fuel Generator
  
  • Produces 150 MW
    
  • Consumes 12 Fuel per minute
    
  
  
• Geothermal Generator
  
  • Produces 50-150 MW, 100-300 MW, or 200-600 MW (based on geyser purity)
    
  • Variable output; use Power Storage to mitigate the fluctuations.
    
  • Consumes nothing
    
  • Researched in the Caterium research tree of the MAM, unlike the other power producers
    
  
  
• Nuclear Power Plant
  
  • Produces 2500 MW
    
  • Consumes 1 Uranium Fuel Rod per 5 minutes, or 1 Plutonium Fuel Rod per 10 minutes.
    
  • Produces Uranium Waste, which is harmful to the player. This is a good reason to use TurboFuel in large Fuel Generator facilities, instead... but if you decide to go ahead with nuclear power, be sure to
    
  • "Recycle" your Uranium Waste by turning it into Non-fissile Uranium, then turning that into Plutonium Pellets, then turning those into Encased Plutonium Cells, then turning those into Plutonium Fuel Rods and finally, sending the Plutonium Fuel Rods into the AWESOME Sink for 153,184 points each.
    
  • DO NOT STORE NUCLEAR WASTE, IT IS BAD FOR YOU.
    
  • DO NOT USE PLUTONIUM FUEL RODS FOR POWER
    BECAUSE PLUTONIUM WASTE CANNOT BE RECYCLED.
    

More information: https://satisfactory.fandom.com/wiki/Power

[PhailRaptor]

If you're still looking for an efficient setup, here's a great example:

https://youtu.be/PSpIkXshPRU

The only changes I make are adding some Fluid Buffers between the Water Pumps and the Pipe array, and feeding the Coal into the middle of the input array rather than one end. There are some issues with liquids in building storage getting deleted on game load, which the buffers help with. And feeding I've had some unexplained issues with feeding Coal into the end leaving the last 2 Generators not quite able to run at 100% uptime despite there being enough Coal, but I've yet to see it feeding the array from the middle.

His channel has quite a few other useful tips, too.

[Veeshan]

However you set it up, make sure you can jump start it without dismantling half your power grid...

[Redronapt]

Originally posted by umop-apisdn:

Originally posted by Redronapt:

ahhh alright thank you for the math i didnt know how much better the oil is at generating fuel

• Biomass Burner
  
  • Produces up to 30 MW (except the pair built into the HUB, which produce up to 20MW each)
    
  • Consumes up to 4 Solid Biofuel per minute
    I say "up to", because these are the only power producer that will burn slower than full speed, thus only using as much fuel as the power requires.
    
  
  
• Coal Generator
  
  • Produces 75 MW
    
  • Consumes 15 Coal per minute
    
  
  
• Fuel Generator
  
  • Produces 150 MW
    
  • Consumes 12 Fuel per minute
    
  
  
• Geothermal Generator
  
  • Produces 50-150 MW, 100-300 MW, or 200-600 MW (based on geyser purity)
    
  • Variable output; use Power Storage to mitigate the fluctuations.
    
  • Consumes nothing
    
  • Researched in the Caterium research tree of the MAM, unlike the other power producers
    
  
  
• Nuclear Power Plant
  
  • Produces 2500 MW
    
  • Consumes 1 Uranium Fuel Rod per 5 minutes, or 1 Plutonium Fuel Rod per 10 minutes.
    
  • Produces Uranium Waste, which is harmful to the player. This is a good reason to use TurboFuel in large Fuel Generator facilities, instead... but if you decide to go ahead with nuclear power, be sure to
    
  • "Recycle" your Uranium Waste by turning it into Non-fissile Uranium, then turning that into Plutonium Pellets, then turning those into Encased Plutonium Cells, then turning those into Plutonium Fuel Rods and finally, sending the Plutonium Fuel Rods into the AWESOME Sink for 153,184 points each.
    
  • DO NOT STORE NUCLEAR WASTE, IT IS BAD FOR YOU.
    
  • DO NOT USE PLUTONIUM FUEL RODS FOR POWER
    BECAUSE PLUTONIUM WASTE CANNOT BE RECYCLED.
    

More information: https://satisfactory.fandom.com/wiki/Power

Thank you so much this is so useful