Yet another "Steam engine backup" solution (simple&low tech)

[DaveMcW]

I don't know the max throughput of the pump, so I used 4.

30 water/sec, enough to feed 5 engines and 7 boilers.

If you're trying for fast response time, you can rotate your first inserter 90 degrees to put it closer to the second. Wood planks also have half the energy of raw wood.

[User_Name]

If you're trying for fast response time, you can rotate your first inserter 90 degrees to put it closer to the second. Wood planks also have half the energy of raw wood.

Thanks for the tip, fixed inserter and made planks.

I guess the shortest possible response time can be achieved by using a car instead of chest for 1 tile travel (parallel inserters), and adding third network consisting of solar panel and capacitor to power inserter that puts wood on the belt and inserter that feeds the boiler (replace burner inserter with fast inserter for less arm travel time, replace both belt inserters with fast inserters for higher "network ping" frequency)

Update: nope, car cannot be used as a chest for fuel. It go into the fuel tank, not cargo.
But replacing all inserters with fast ones improved response time to a fraction of a second.

[CreeperDaReeper]

Update: nope, car cannot be user as a chest for fuel. It go into the fuel tank, not cargo

Just preload it with a piece of coal, then the planks would go to inventory.

[User_Name]

Update: nope, car cannot be user as a chest for fuel. It go into the fuel tank, not cargo

Just preload it with a piece of coal, then the planks would go to inventory.

Nope, doesn't work. Inserter refuses to put fuel items anywhere except the fuel tank.
Anyway, I realized that travel time doesn't affect performance, it's the frequency what matters. Fast inserters is a way to go.

[User_Name]

Performance can be further upgraded by adding multiple pairs of fast inserters, but....

Does it really matter anymore?

[User_Name]

Just realized that I should measure response time in the midnight, not during the day. In daytime pre-heated water already sits in engines, so the picture really shows nothing.

[User_Name]

My solar/accu farm can't keep up with the consumption (also, the ratio is wrong)
Steam engine kicks in to help

[User_Name]

More on storing heated water:
You need 14 boilers to heat the water that goes to the tank to 100 degrees.
One water tank stores 210 MJ of energy (that is equal to 42 capacitors, but take much less space)
Normal pipe can supply 10 steam engines with water (edit: it depends on the pipe length, as explained here)
Pump has half the throughput of the pipe. That allows to use pump as flow limiter, so we can use only 7 boilers to fill hot water tanks.
That works the other way too - with 4 pumps you can have pressurized pipe with double throughput (pipes before the pump are not pressurized, so you still need 2x pipes on the input)
Every port of the water tank has the throughput of a regular pipe, but you can use all 4 at the same time.

Connecting pumps in series doesn't do any good, but connecting them in parallel works.

So, the question is: can we run 40 steam engines with only 2 pipes, single tank and 7 boilers, and still get 20MW?

Yes, we can! (for 11 seconds)




Note the 4 pipes routed from the tank to the pressurization facility. You need 4 on input, 2 on exit.

[ssilk]

One water tank stores 210 MJ of energy (that is equal to 42 capacitors, but take much less space)

Sorry for my stupid question, but how have you found that out?

My calculation ( https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... gy_storage ) is much less (2.5 MJ).

I already thought, that it must be much more. So - again - I just want to ask how you found that out.

[User_Name]

Placed a hot water tank, small steam engine and 42 capacitors. It charged them to 100% before running dry.

Actually, I double-tested that with 20MW engine from the pic above and got different results - 262MJ (53 capacitors).
Did not expect that much energy from all the extra pipes. That's ~0.8 MJ per pipe, roughly.

That means my calculations above are slightly off, because I did not account for water in the pipes, and I did not remember how many I had used for test setup. Probably none, but I don't remember.

[User_Name]

Yes, it's 212MJ per tank

[ssilk]

Hm. If it is 250 MJ instead of 2.5... it would sound quite matching... But where is my calculation error? Are the units multiplied by 100 or the heat capacity per unit? Units sounds logical.

All I found was

Code: Select all

    fluid_box =
    {
      base_area = 250,
      pipe_covers = pipecoverspictures(),
      pipe_connections =
      {
        { position = {-1, -2} },
        { position = {2, 1} },
        { position = {1, 2} },
        { position = {-2, -1} },
      },
    },

Does base_area=250 mean it is 250 * 10 (= pressure/level)?
Perhaps "a unit" is 0.01, that means we have 250000 units? It is just displayed as "2500.00"?

PS: For correct tests if this is really 212 MJ I would say you need about 10 or more tanks to reduce internal calculation errors.

[User_Name]

PS: For correct tests if this is really 212 MJ I would say you need about 10 or more tanks to reduce internal calculation errors.

Don't have that many spare capacitors.
Also, the number sits well with me.
212/250=0.85
0.85 can be the efficiency of the steam engine, or the temperature difference between the boiling water and environment (100-15).
Probably the latter.

Anyway, this is mostly useless information since there are no electric boilers in the game, so even with liquid tanks taking 20x less space than equal capacitor bank (and I'm not even comparing production costs!), it is still impossible to store solar energy that way.

[User_Name]

One water tank stores 210 MJ of energy (that is equal to 42 capacitors, but take much less space)

Sorry for my stupid question, but how have you found that out?

My calculation ( https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... gy_storage ) is much less (2.5 MJ).

I already thought, that it must be much more. So - again - I just want to ask how you found that out.

Can you correct the wiki?
It still says 2.5Mj, which is 85 times off the real value.

[ssilk]

I corrected it, but this bugs me in two directions. A) you can change it yourself. Just need an account B) I still want to know, how this is calculated.

[Fatmice]

Sorry to dig this up, but the calculation is rather simple.

Tank has 2500 units of water.
Steam engine generate at 100% efficiency.

Energy contained in fuel is converted by the boilers to hot water, which is just a liquid form of energy. This water holds energy at ratio of 1KJ/degree/unit_of_water. Since water is set to have a maximum temperature of 100 degree and minimum of 15 degree, the most energy that can be in a unit_of_water is 85 KJ. Therefore, the steam generator can extract at most 85 KJ of energy from a unit_of_water. The tank therefore held 2500x85KJ = 212500 KJ or 212.5 MJ.

This agrees nicely with all the tests that I've done and also makes sense when you look at the way steam generator works. They generate 510 KW while consuming 6 units_of_water/s => (510 KJ/s) / (6 units_of_water/s) = 85 KJ / unit_of_water. The dimensional analysis also make sense (KJ/s) / (Water/s) = KJ/Water. Since steam generator does not generate power when given water at 15 degrees, but does so at maximum performance when given water at 100 degree, it can only be deduced that 100 degree water holds 85 KJ / unit_of_water. QED

[ssilk]

Ah. Yes, this is by degree! Thanks.

Edit:
https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... emperature

I corrected the right usages of work and energy. (Hope so)

[Erok21]

Help me understand the advantage of using a system like this vs simply overloading your electric generation. Thanks for the clever build!

[Koub]

Nice Necro
But here's my answer : How can you know you'll get a particularly deadly attack one particular night (or even day) ? A setup with let's say 25% comfort margin is nice, but if you're unlucky with biter attacks and have your lasers shoot a lot, you might not recharge your accus as much as you'd want. The problem is you'll notice you're short of stored energy when all your factory, defenses included, will instantly stop working in the middle of the night. And you'll be totally helpless until the sun is high enough to provide you decent power.

With such a system, you have a backup that will always be ready for the unexpected moment. And it might save your butt, because even if you don't produce enough power to run your factory at full speed, you can at least have enough to power your laser turrets

[Aru]

This is mine.

viewtopic.php?p=148688#p148688

It's not simple or low tech, but, it's designed with laser turrets in mind. So, it takes 0.20s to turn on fully, and will stay on for a configurable amount of time before it is eligible for shut down, so that even power cycling won't diminish turret output. I don't know if that's what OP meant by 'clock' or not, but it's faster than taking several "seconds".