Power production

How to set up pumps, boilers and steam engines?

- always asked - todo -

Basics:

• water in pipes can be seen. Use empty pieces of pipes to look, how the water flows.
• water can currently not be heated over 100 degrees. So you have a fluid, not steam, which drives the steam engines. (It is complicated to calculate, how steam behaves under different pressures and temperatures and how many energy can be gained, but much easier, with a fluid, eventually this is changed in future, see this thread: http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1515 )
• you should never mix the boilers (heating) with the engines (usage). This will cause chaotic effects, when you need more power. See tip #1 to find those problems!

. More usages of the accumulators

Reduce energy consumption in critical times

Accumulators can be used to limit the need for power for some parts of your factory.

There are naturally 3 items, which are good candidates for that:

• radar
• labs
• electric furnace/miner

How does it work?

An accumulator has a lower delivery priority than any other power-using entity, this guarantees, that it receives only energy, when you have enough. At the same time it can deliver energy in another electric network. Both facts together works in this case as a regulated transformer and delivers only energy into other networks, if you are producing enough. Or in other words: on power-shortage not the whole factory goes down, only not so important parts.

This is fine, if you want to guarantee, that basic functions of your factory keep working (lasers, ammo production, very dependent on your priorities) no matter what you add on more load to you power usage.

Especially for the radar this makes much sense up from v0.7.3: the radar explores new parts of the map, and because radar consumes extreme amounts of energy, it makes sense to limit it, because when you don't have so much energy, you need also not to explore.

In general this is a technique, which works only well, when you just researched accu and solar panel, but don't have enough resources to built big solar- and accu-farms.

- todo : pics from a radar station, research labs and electric furnace behind an accu. -

How to switch off steam engines in the night, when enough accumulator capacity is available?

At some point, when you have enough Solar panels and Accumulators you may use the steam-engines only as silent power-reserve, for example at the end of the night after a long fight. This is normally not possible, because steam-engines have a higher priority than accumulators; accus are only unloaded, if nothing else delivers. Or in other words, when the sun goes down, the steam engines turn on to save the accu-power.

But you can trick around this:

The accu (hovered) is loaded from the main network. The accu-powered-network unloads this accu to power the fast inserter. If the accu is empty, the fast inserter doesn't work anymore, but the basic inserter remains working, because he is powered by the main network. He unloads the remaining wood from the chest. The chest gets empty and the smart inserter begins to work, filling up coal into the boiler.

For simpleness we reduced it to only one boiler/steam engine, normally much more is needed to make sense! Note, that with v0.7 you need to program the first inserter only. Place the others with pressed shift-key. All you have to do then is to connect it with the wire.

Basically this works, because the accumulator in this picture unloads a bit faster, than the accus in the main network, because he stays in two networks and so a bit more power is needed. It is recommended to place a second accu in neighborhood, which sits in the main network to have a direct reference.

You can trim the accu powered network exactly to your needs by adding more accumulators or place some lights, or put in more wood, which extends or shorten the time before the accu(s) - and so the chest - is empty. With some experience you can trim this so, that the main accu power is empty after the steam engines are full powered again (it takes some time, until the boilers heat the water and steam engines are at full power again.)

For more informations about that you can also look into this thread.

Note, that after running there is always some rest-energy in the steam-engine and boiler. This is used at the beginning of the night, this is quite normal.

Note also, that this complicated setup might be replaced by an easier in some future; sensors to measure the current state of accu-capacity or pollution-factor, switch the network of, instead of the inserter; there are many ideas.

What can be seen from the electric network info?

- todo -

How to set poles?

- covering, rules with the length between poles etc. - todo -

How to drag electric wires myself?

- basic stuff, pressing shift when setting a pole etc. - todo -

How to slow down research/production?

- Mainly about using different networks, networks connected with accus to limit power - todo -