Power Generator (Electricity)

[ESOS]

Until when or what tier we use Solid Biofuel?
I'm tired gathering Leaves and Woods for it since my factory is keep growing and eating a lot of electricity even though I'm at tier 3 & 4 now, I have 5 nodes with each have a lot of Smelters, Constructors and Assemblers to produce anything that needed to complete the objective so I can unlock tier 5 & 6

Any tips on how to easy gather Leaves & Woods? I'm using Chainsaw now and the RSS are getting less and less around my HUB so I need to go out quite far now to gather Leaves & Woods.
No solar panels in this game?

[Vectorspace]

Basically, you should switch to coal power as soon as you possibly can. It's unlocked in the first milestone of Tier 3. Some people carefully plan their progression and factory to do the minimum necessary to unlock coal power, specifically so they can do away with biomass burners

A tip - build your coal generators next to water, as it's easier to move coal long distance than it is to move water

[ShelLuser]

No solar panels nor any kind of "green" energy: you're going to have to work and spent energy to get] your energy 😉

Anyway, it's not called biofuel but biomass; you need to unlock this using the MAM console. In specific: look into the Mycelia tree. You will probably need to unlock this tree first, and you can do that by trying to find this stuff; I found it inside a cave.

After that the first node will unlock biomass; which you can make from leaves, wood and of course the fungus material mentioned earlier ;)

As to gathering of leaves... I focused my attention on the chainsaw: if you fell large trees you get wood (which is better fuel) as well as leaves. So I went for wood as well as some of the leaves around it. Keep in mind that this stuff regrows.


Maybe a tip: biofuel generators regulate their burnings based on the consumption. It's my experience so far that making a few islands and feeding that with separate burners seems much more energy conservative than focussing yourself on one huge cluster of biomass burners.

At first I ended up with 3 main islands: my main iron production, my copper production and the "assembly line" where I had 3 assemblers to generate rotors, enforced plating and... those square thingies of which I forgot the name ;)

All islands were fueled by 2 bio burners and 200 biomass for each burner lasted quite a long time. Long enough to work on progression and also a bit of harvesting.

If you're on Tier 3 already you should have the coal milestone, right? That's what I'd concentrate on! I just finished building 2 coal "power plants": each consisting of 2 coal generators (and 2 biofuel burners to kickstart the whole thing), and a long pipeline (and ditto powerline) to a remote waterpump :)

No more refueling for me! ;) Well, apart from the sugarbox I suppose :) (tractor & truck station: tier 3 transport milestone).

Hope this can give you some ideas!

(edit)

Originally posted by Vectorspace:

A tip - build your coal generators next to water, as it's easier to move coal long distance than it is to move water

Not sure I agree with that... You do raise a fair point of course: when I ran my lines I had both a pipe and powerline to work on but even so...

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2896250085
It's honestly not that hard either, especially if you make sure to fully utilize your toolbar(s). And of course... use pumps whenever you need to move your fluids upwards.

I have a very reliable setup here. However... I did notice that splitting my waterline in 2 worked, but when I tried to go for 3 I ran into some issues. But I'm not too sure (yet!) if that is a result of running a long line.

[Die Hand Gottes]

no I fully agree with "Vectorspace".
If you use a lot of power plants that are also overclocked, it is not easy to operate them with water stability, especially with nuclear power plants, then you should definitely build near water.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2878763774
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2876262246

[ESOS]

Yes I have unlocked Coal Power Generator, I'll find and try to build it near water.
Thank you guys

[T-Bone Biggins]

Originally posted by Die Hand Gottes:

no I fully agree with "Vectorspace".
If you use a lot of power plants that are also overclocked, it is not easy to operate them with water stability, especially with nuclear power plants, then you should definitely build near water.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2878763774
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2876262246

The second more blue-ish colored picture here is the same spot I tend to make my first coal power plant. If you start in the grasslands biome it's north of you and has 3 coal deposits nearby. Also has other materials for basic production lines, and is in the general direction of the nearest quartz deposit. I tend to make a ramp from the cliff above to the beach below so you don't have try driving on that goat path on the side to get down. Possible, yes, but the ramp is so much faster and lets you reliably automate a truck route to that location if you need it.

[Wolfgang]

Green energy won't come, see here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4LlorYbVV0&t=656s

[mackster]

You can use a mod that brings in solar power etc. It wont be in the game tho, devs confirmed that - just like they said about blueprints

[qwertyuiop]

Originally posted by ShelLuser:

No solar panels nor any kind of "green" energy: you're going to have to work and spent energy to get] your energy 😉

Geothermal Generators seem pretty "green", though they're pretty late game (at the end of the Caterium chain in the MAM), they're limited by the number of geothermal vents on the map and have a fluctuating energy output so they should be combined with Power Storage.
So you probably wouldn't want to use them exclusively

[ESOS]

Originally posted by Please don't judge me lol:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2896927901

It's first time I'm building quite complex structures I'm laughing seeing this lol
The pipes are quite organized tho, but man look at those conveyors lol

[mackster]

I agree coal is the way to go ASAP. Its the only way to really get to the automation stage without running around filling up your power sources.

I was always rubbish building good looking factories. Tho pretty happy with my new coal plant, giving me 3.8G.

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2019331435744227598/E83FE3498E8843E75E44E49B9F0E428F4F08209A/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2019331435744245717/C460CF852CB448E85B6EC22D3868F4D6B0A178CA/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

[ShelLuser]

Originally posted by Vectorspace:

A tip - build your coal generators next to water, as it's easier to move coal long distance than it is to move water

Pardon for a second post on this but I want to set something straight ;)

See, when it comes to engineering (both ingame, but also IRL) rule #1 is that you should never assume to know everything. And because I used another method I decided that I should also look into your suggestion too.

Well, I stand corrected!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2897038054
I split my coal provision in my 2nd powerplant and ran it all the way towards the water supply. There I placed a 2nd waterpump and three coal generators close by. I then connected the waterpipe, splitted it into three, and hooked up all coal generators.

Sure enough: the pressure kept high enough to fuel all three generators; as I mentioned earlier this didn't work for me before.

Of course now I had to cope with another problem: not having enough coal ;)

So then I splitted the coal provision on my 1st powerplant (where I also have my foundry) and ran that all the way towards my 2nd plant where I merged it with the other one.

Sure enough: that did the trick. So now I have 7 coal generators all hooked up :-)

Thanks for your tip!

[T-Bone Biggins]

Originally posted by mackster:

I agree coal is the way to go ASAP. Its the only way to really get to the automation stage without running around filling up your power sources.

I was always rubbish building good looking factories. Tho pretty happy with my new coal plant, giving me 3.8G.

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2019331435744227598/E83FE3498E8843E75E44E49B9F0E428F4F08209A/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2019331435744245717/C460CF852CB448E85B6EC22D3868F4D6B0A178CA/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

I learned to run pipes through foundations to make it neater looking. This plant was built by that small pond E-SE of the grasslands start. There is a coal deposit on top of a plateau and near it a sulfur deposit, most people are probably familiar with this as the closest sulfur deposit for the grasslands start. I diverted extra coal that isn't used in black powder production there towards that pond (which is N-NW of the coal and sulfur) for a little extra power.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2777358169

In this second pic you can see on the left side the conveyor belt I ran from the coal deposit.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2777358181

[OBXandos]

Originally posted by Wolfgang:

Green energy won't come, see here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4LlorYbVV0&t=656s

That is something I never understood. Sure people on our planet see it as green energy or renewable or whatever, but in the grand scheme of things solar and wind are just another resource. Ficsit doesn't waste, except for the most abundant power sources on the planet.

From a game mechanics and balance standpoint I can see an argument there but I still think things could be balanced pretty easily.

[Seedling]

Originally posted by OBXandos:

From a game mechanics and balance standpoint I can see an argument there but I still think things could be balanced pretty easily.

Solar and wind have such low power generation per surface unit that the game would run out of entities before you'd be able to power anything on par with a nuclear setup.
Hydro power could be possible, but you'd be limited to waterfalls, and each waterfall would need a unique construction with variable resources.
Microwave power could be possible once you complete all Project: Assembly stages, with power distributed amongst receiving stations on the surface (more satellites = more power, but power is split over each receiver station.)
Alien tech might be used to build quantum power generation, using artifacts and SAM ore, but that is 1.0 release stuff (if at all)

[Rvlion]

Originally posted by Seedling:

Originally posted by OBXandos:

Solar and wind have such low power generation per surface unit that the game would run out of entities before you'd be able to power anything on par with a nuclear setup.

For the OP I just made a little calculation. In the Netherlands were I live we have the nuclear power plant in Borsele producing about 4000 MWh, a large windturbine can produces 12 KWh (provided it can run at max speed for 1 hour).
Using this you would need 333 wind turbines for 1 nuclear plant.

Looking at the power generation for satisfactory 1 nuclear plant (not overclocked) would produce 2500 MWh, using the above theoretical calculations for a wind turbine in Satisfactory and not to make it massively OP, should only be allowed to produce max 7.5 MW.
You would then have to build 5 turbines to actually start producing more power then 1 biomassa burner.
Solar on a sunny day can produce around 20KWh, but on average in the Netherlands it would be around 0.85 KWh for 1 small panel, for Satisfactory you would then probably build 4 combined as one.

Conclusion, both compared to RL are near useless, mostly due to power fluctuations. When their is barely any wind or cloudy weather and/or night power production would be pathetic.