What's a nice power source?

[Szczuku]

My world gave me 2 natural gas geysers so I'm thinking about setting up Natural gas generators+ fertelizer makers and pinch pepernut farms for all that polluted water. I'm not sure however how to make them so that nothing breaks/overheats/becomes too full.

And i would also like to ask what power sources do you guys usually make. And I'm talking about simple but effective and not limited ones

[SharraShimada]

Nat gas generators wont produce so much p-water anymore. Its just a little bit now. So dont keep your hops up to feed even a small pincha farm. It may be enough for 1 or maybe 2 plants...

But of course you should use the generators for power. Its free energy when the gas comes from geysers.

Use gold amalgam, and they wont break, as long as you dont build them in the oil biome...

For myself... i change power as needed / becomes availlable. Solar panels of course, but thats late game. Coal evertime for peaks. And the rest depends on what the map gives me.

[bmilohill]

All of them. Anything the map can provide. 
Why build a perfect power setup when you can build 12 okay ones and not ever worry about going a cycle without. Optimize in midgame. 

[camelot]

1 nat gas generator polluted water output is 67.5g/s (40.5kg/cycle). 1 pincha pepper requires 35kg polluted water/cycle. So...

Up to cycle 100, I depend on coal. After that, I'll use nat gas if have a geyser nearby and/or use petroleum to refine steels. Late game I use solar with backup from petro/coal/hydrogen generators. Solar is renewable but to setup is very expensive and time consuming

[Lacost]

Klei got a nice balance for the power sources since there is no single go-to source that simply outclasses every alternative. I use natural gas and hydrogen for the constant power draw of my main base, coal power for refineries (metal and glass) and solar power to provide for everything space related (bunker doors, miners etc.).

 

So the answer is: Use all sources of power you have available.

[Nightinggale]

4 hours ago, SharraShimada said:

Use gold amalgam, and they wont break, as long as you dont build them in the oil biome...

Gas generators outputs water and carbondioxide at the same temperature as the building itself. This means you can cool your base by cooling the natural gas generators. For this purpose overheat temperature doesn't matter, but instead high thermal conductivity is attractive, particularly if combined with wheezeworts. Gold amalgam is the worst material when it comes to thermal conductivity meaning the temperature difference between the (hotter) generator and the air is the highest when using gold amalgam.

 

I have tried running at -60 C and it is in fact doable and will generate coldness for your base. The question is if going so extreme is worth it because it takes a fair amount of time to set up, as well as a number of wheezeworts. On top of that, the exhaust starts to freeze in the pipes unless you actively counter that. It's fairly complex to get up and running smoothly. Not impossible, but complex.

 

At the same time you can also aim for extreme temperatures intentionally and use the heat for steam turbines. 67.5 g/s of steam at 270 C will deliver 47.8 W. An additional 10 W comes from the heat output of the generator and if you can pre-heat water intake by lowering the exhaust gas to even just 200 C, then you get an additional 1.3 W. That's a total of almost 60 W or an increase of 7.5% power output when burning the same amount of natural gas. Increasing the temperature further will make it produce even more power for the same amount of natural gas, but it will require more space materials and at that point you likely won't need to do such an effort to gain a bit more power like that.

[fredhp]

As posted above, every power source is a good power source.
My preference is natgas generators because i consider them a "clean" form of power generation - Co2 goes directly to gas pipes just to feed my slicksters.

Hydrogen, and now i farm heat from the vulcanos and magma biome until it runs out.

The only power source i almost never use is the petroleum generator. I build them, store a nice amount of oil in liquid tanks, but only use it in emergency situations, when all other forms of power is unavailable.

When i acquire thermium and supercoolant, i go to the classical "oil to natgas" conversion plant, which, usually means almost "unlimited power" due to the high efficiency rate.
 

[Nightinggale]

I decided to do a bit of math on frozen natural gas generators. Each consume 90 g/s natural gas and produce 67.5 g/s polluted water. Now imagine we have an oil cooker meaning we have sour gas at around 540 C and we need to cool it to -161.5 C to make natural gas. How much can 67.5 g polluted water cool 90 g of sour gas?

If we say the water starts at -60 and is heated to 20, then the sour gas will be cooled 132 C. If we heat the water to 110, then the sour gas is cooled 281 C. Not enough to be self sustained by itself, but if we have 90 g/s of melting methane too, then we have 90 g/s of natural gas at around -160 C, which too can be used to cool the sour gas.

If we use space materials and cool the natural gas generators to -150 C, then heating polluted water from -150 to 20 will cool sour gas by 281 C. Heating polluted water from -150 to 110 will cool sour gas by 429 C. Heating the natural gas from -160 to 0 will cool the sour gas by an additional 173 C, or 602 C combined. That's 6/7 of the cooing needed for the sour gas.

In theory if you run the natural gas generators at -150, heat the output water to 110 C and you heat methane to become natural gas at 85 C, then the amount of DTUs needed to do so will be the same as going from boiling oil to freezing to methane, or the entire span of the sour gas.

Another source of cooling the sour gas is the oil going into the oil cooker/sour gas generator. I didn't even include that part in the math.

It looks to me like running extremely cold natural gas generators can turn crude oil into natural gas on a 1:1 scale with a really low power consumption compared to what it can produce.

 

Next question: now that the math adds up, how to we actually build a cooker/condenser/powerplant which exploits this? It seems complicated to do it without the heat (energy) going into all sorts of places it shouldn't go. Having a temperature difference of more than 700 C between the hottest and coldest parts means leakage will be an issue even if insulated and that's not even taking into account that the heat source of the cooker could be a volcano.

 

EDIT: there is another obvious way of getting rid of the heat. Make the sour gas heat up steam and then use the steam to run a steam turbine. If done well, the sour gas can be cooled to around 200 C, or cooled about 340 C. If that energy is delivered into a steam turbine, it will generate 67 W while it also serves the purpose of getting rid of the unwanted heat.

[simonchvz]

7 hours ago, Szczuku said:

And i would also like to ask what power sources do you guys usually make.

I'll second the "use everything that's convenient" approach.  I usually stick with a hamster wheel on a battery for the first ~20-30 cycles, then switch to coal to tide me over until I mostly begin relying on nat gas/petrol and if I'm bothering with a closed electrolyzer some small supplemental H2 that I can't be bothered to store.  I never really phase out an energy solution entirely, they just become stepped backups that only turns on when power demand spikes higher than previous generators can handle.

7 hours ago, Szczuku said:

I'm not sure however how to make them so that nothing breaks/overheats/becomes too full

For natural gas, what I do is stick one or two wheezes in the same room as the geyser and only pump out gas when it's above a certain pressure (I use 3k, you can go much lower).  Two wheezes blowing NG will almost always outcool the gas geyser outputs to below 100C.  One wheeze with a decent atmosphere pressure buffer will usually stabilize at an acceptable temp except for some particularly spiky geysers.

There's lots of different methods to handle overflows.  I set up ~12-20 gas canisters and snake the gas output into them, however many is necessary to smooth the geyser production over its downtime, and turn off the pump when they're full.  You can also set up a super-compressor really easily through the vent overpressure mechanics or with some door automation chicanery. 

[fredhp]

The problem is not only how to cool the gas, but how to prevent a "thermal death" of the system:

What i do is to try to cool sour gas using the small amount of power possible, so i cool the gas this way:

4 pumps collect sourgas ( i run 2 parallels gas lines, so i can convert 2kg/s, more than enough), then the gas goes to the following route:

Crude Oil Storage -> Water Tank (with a turbine above it) -> Methane to natgas converter -> Condenser.
Condenser aquaturner is inside the boiler.

This way a lot of heat is recycled without using any power, and the remaing heat is pumped back to the boiled by the aquaturner. Some power is generated when water evaporates.

While the cooking process is heat positive ( Crude Oil SCH == 1.69, Petroleum == 1.76, Sour Gas == 1.89), there is a big loss when methane is re-heated (Methane SCH is 2.19), and i dont want to use any power devices to heating, in fact, the whole system turns out to be heat negative - it need heat from somewhere else, so i install aquaturners from base cooling and  LOX/LH2 in the boiler room. 

[Nightinggale]

1 hour ago, simonchvz said:

I usually stick with a hamster wheel on a battery for the first ~20-30 cycles

I never stop using manual generators completely. Say for instance you rely on natural gas. You have a gas pump, which pumps to a filter and from there to the generators. I then place a transformer, which powers a battery and this battery powers everything from the pump to the generators, including whatever filters to what else needs power (if anything). I then place a manual generator next to the battery (ok, maybe not the same room, but the same wire) and set the priority of that generator to 9.

The transformer should keep the battery fully charged at all time. However if something goes horribly wrong and all your batteries end up being completely empty, the dupes can restart the natural gas power production by just powering the manual generator. Usually they never actually use it, but it has happened and I got the idea from needing it in one game where it wasn't there. I think of it as some sort of emergency backup plan. You can do the same with other generators requiring piped input (petroleum and hydrogen) while coal doesn't require power to get restarted.

For how long do I use manual generators as primary power source? It really depends on the game. If I have problems getting refined metal, it can be useful to place a manual generator on top of a pressure plate. This can then be used to turn other generators on and off, hence turning them off when the batteries are full. It's not as good as a smart battery, but it requires much less refined metal meaning it can be useful for early automation.

[beowulf2010]

2 hours ago, simonchvz said:

For natural gas, what I do is stick one or two wheezes in the same room as the geyser and only pump out gas when it's above a certain pressure (I use 3k, you can go much lower).  Two wheezes blowing NG will almost always outcool the gas geyser outputs to below 100C.  

I do the same. In my opinion, keep at least 2kg of pressure for the wheezeworts. I usually set it up to 4kg but anything 2kg or over work just fine. 

[goatt]

nuclear fusion

[greggbert]

Hydrogen is the best power source, followed by NatGas, then Oil, then Coal IMO.   (I rank them by the ease of storage, the most easily stored is the one you should save and use as a buffer when you're low, for me that's coal and oil.) YOu don't have to cool your natgas.  Just pump it through insulated pipes to your insulated generator room, let the generators spill polluted water onto the floor then eventually drip down into a collection cistern.  The polluted water on the floor will take some of the heat from your generators, keeping them cool enough to run forever with no wheezworts.

[Neotuck]

3 hours ago, greggbert said:

Hydrogen is the best power source

Most players would disagree.

Supply is the biggest problem with hydrogen generators and are only useful as part of a SPOM build.

Even if you have a hydrogen vent on the map, the low output and high temperature makes them inefficient for generators.

[greggbert]

I only mean that hydrogen should be the first you should burn because it produces almost no waste is in inefficient to store for later.

[KittenIsAGeek]

On 5/3/2019 at 5:22 AM, Szczuku said:

My world gave me 2 natural gas geysers so I'm thinking about setting up Natural gas generators+ fertelizer makers and pinch pepernut farms for all that polluted water. I'm not sure however how to make them so that nothing breaks/overheats/becomes too full.

And i would also like to ask what power sources do you guys usually make. And I'm talking about simple but effective and not limited ones

Your question is not a simple answer.  It is going to depend on a lot of factors: What resources you have available, what technology you have researched, and what systems you're wanting to run.  Your answer is also going to change as you reveal more of the map.

Here are some points to consider when developing your power:

1. Dupe power doesn't cost resources, but does cost dupe time.  If your dupes are running on hamster wheels, they can't build your base or research new stuff.  However, late in the game when you've got a lot of dupe idle time, throwing some hamster wheels in can reduce the resource cost for keeping your base power running.
2. Coal is cheap and easy.  Its a great source for early in the game, or for out-of-the-way locations that don't need a lot of power.  Coal generators will run until they're out of coal unless they're also connected to a smart battery (or other logic) that controls their run time.  I always build coal generators with a smart battery to control them.
3. Natural Gas generators produce a good amount of power each.  The limiting factor is your access to natural gas.  A geyser will provide enough gas to run 1 generator continually and have some left over.  A good geyser will run 2 or 3 (not counting dormancy).  Natural gas is also a byproduct from various other things, such as an oil refinery or fertilizer production.  However, if you want to produce natural gas expressly for running natural gas generators, then the only way to do it is to boil the natural gas into petrol and then into sour gas, cool it down until it condenses into methane, then warm it back up into a gas again.  It isn't easy, but for massive amounts of natural gas, that's the only way to go.  You also need to remember that NG generators produce byproducts that have to be managed.  Polluted water and carbon dioxide can build up and cause problems if you don't manage them.
4. Petroleum generators produce a LOT of power.  Like NG generators, they also produce a lot of other byproducts that need to be handled.  Most maps have 1 to 3 oil reservoirs.  For 1kg/s of water, you can produce 3333.33g/s crude which can be refined (or boiled) into crude.  Basically, if you have water, you have power.
5. ALL generators (except hamster wheels and solar) produce heat as a byproduct.  Depending on how complicated you want to get, you can move the heat around through various means including aquatuners, and get it somewhere that you can use it.
6. Steam generators run off heat.  You can use the heat from boiling crude into petrol, or from condensing sour gas to methane.  Unless you're using a volcano, they're not really a good source of power for your base to use -- but they are an excellent way to remove heat.
7. Hydrogen generators have no byproducts (other than heat).  Some will say they're the best generator, others will say to never use them. Here's why:  They burn hydrogen.  In the early game, hydrogen mostly just gets in the way.  It makes a decent gas for cold rooms, since wheezewarts are the most effective when in hydrogen.  Its also a power source for AETNs.  However, other than that, hydrogen is mostly just in your way early in the game. That changes COMPLETELY when you hit space.  Hydrogen rockets are the most efficient at getting dupes up into space.  You'll be wanting a LOT of it at that point, and the only way to get it (reliably) is by using electrolyzers.  So, if your plan is to go to space, you probably don't want to be burning your hydrogen -- you want to save it.

 

Basically, you're going to want to build power generators based on what resources you have available.  You also want to consider how you get the resources they need, what their byproducts are, and how much power you need.  For example, with #2 I said that 'coal is cheap and easy.'  This is true, but coal is also a somewhat limited resource as it is only renewable through hatch poop.  This means that coal is excellent for power early in your base when you're digging out biomes.  Its also great as a backup power source, or as an intermittent source in an area not connected to your main grid.  However, you'll run into some serious problems if you try to run a 20kw grid off only coal. 

You asked for "power sources that are simple, effective, and not limited."  That's impossible.  All power sources in the game have limitations.  All power sources in the game have difficulties.  All power sources can be effective.  Yes, you can run your base entirely off natural gas, but you'll need to build a complex system to boil crude oil into sour gas, then cool it down into methane before warming it back up to burnable natural gas.  So, while natural gas may fit your 'not limited' requirement, it isn't simple.  You will have difficulty if you try and limit yourself to a single source of power.   Your power sources are not going to be effective if you don't manage their waste products (or night time for solar, or dupe availability for hamster wheels).  Your power sources will be limited if you can't produce the resources they need.  Once you understand the limitations and requirements of your various power sources, you can build a network that runs reliably and efficiently.  

Just now, greggbert said:

I only mean that hydrogen should be the first you should burn because it produces almost no waste is in inefficient to store for later.

While you are correct that hydrogen doesn't have any waste (other than heat), I disagree with your statement that it should be burned first.  There are a number of methods to store hydrogen for later use and more experienced players will definitely want to save it for their space program.  There is some merit, however, in making the argument that for new players, hydrogen can be an effective early power source.  Since hydrogen is a byproduct of producing oxygen with electrolyzers, it does need to be managed either by storing or burning.