steam battery Alternatives to batteries for solar pannels

[badgamer123]

a bit weak without Tepidizer is space heater,you need a very large pool of water however,due to space heater only give you 125C.

EDIT:how about mass battery in steam room?the run off give a bit of heat ,if you make a lot of them in steel i think it work.
there don't seem to have any heat efficiency building without mod

[peachkillu]

Do solar panels even generate enough power to operate the bunker doors above them. How much more effective is it to just use the heat from the bunker ceiling to directly run the turbine  

[badgamer123]

3 minutes ago, peachkillu said:

Do solar panels even generate enough power to operate the bunker doors above them. How much more effective is it to just use the heat from the bunker ceiling to directly run the turbine  

pretty sure it more then enough,the problem is storing them without overheat....or you become rich daddy using steel on battery.
i remember my old base only having 15 solar panels(stacked)it was enough to cover all door above them and help with liquid H2 and H2O process(need a bit help from main power grid).

[Angpaur]

17 minutes ago, peachkillu said:

Do solar panels even generate enough power to operate the bunker doors above them. How much more effective is it to just use the heat from the bunker ceiling to directly run the turbine  

My solar power farm was of 43 solar panels. It generated way more power than my whole colony needed

[DemainaNyx]

As mentioned in this thread,  I specifically set up my smart batteries so that when solar power is generated, every other generator is turned off.  Only when the power falls below a certain threshold do I power up other generators, and that depends on what I have available.  Petroleum gens first, nat gas next, then hydrogen, then coal, then manual power if absolutely necessary.

 

As seen though, gathering heat into something and dissipating it slowly as a means to generate power is viable.  Combing gas pipes, liquid pipes, conveyor rails, and solid tiles, that's a lot of material that can gather heat from one source and move it elsewhere. 

I think it would be better to store the energy in something other than steam though, or use a secondary pocket of steam to hold the heat and let that heat up a metal tile that heats up the turbine steam so that not all that energy is deleted at once.  That way we can limit how much heat is pumped into the turbine room so as to not overheat the turbines and waste that power we gathered. @Angpaur's system does this via the gas around the turbines.  I just don't know what gas or how quickly that heat moves from the aquatuner room to the turbine room.

[Angpaur]

Gas around the aquatuners is super coolant. You can see on the screenshot that it was at 919C at that moment. I was moving there a heat from rockets and also some heat from producing liquid O2 and H.

[nakomaru]

13 hours ago, DemainaNyx said:

I think it would be better to store the energy in something other than steam though

No need - you can store arbitrarily large quantities of steam in any sized room, therefore you can store arbitrarily large quantities of heat within a very small temperature range. Just increase the quantity of steam. Water has very high SHC and is generally abundant. Turbines are always maximally efficient until they go above 100% capacity, which is essentially determined by the temperature.

[peachkillu]

6 hours ago, nakomaru said:

Turbines are always maximally efficient until they go above 100% capacity, which is essentially determined by the temperature.

What is said temperature 

[Yunru]

It's not possible. Whatever system you use to generate heat, or convert it back to electricity, is going to have more loss than the run-off that the batteries would have.

[Darkin Coaled]

7 minutes ago, Yunru said:

more loss than the run-off that the batteries would have.

Except it might be simply an exercise in engineering. Maybe optimizing for minimal loss is not the point. A massive capacity lossy storage with a small footprint could be preferable than racks upon racks of batteries. In general solar power is free, costing you real estate up top. Losing 20% of it might not be such a big deal to some people.

[Yunru]

1 minute ago, Darkin Coaled said:

Maybe optimizing for minimal loss is not the point.

You're right. Maybe the OP's opening prose where they suggest finding a more loss-efficient solution isn't the point. /s

[Darkin Coaled]

@Yunru The way I read it was that you cannot store the energy indefinitely in a battery, maybe I'm wrong.

I'm seeing this as a tradeoff between harvesting everything and then it running away slowly into the void again and harvesting most of it and letting it sit there forever. Nevermind.

[Yunru]

3 minutes ago, Darkin Coaled said:

@Yunru The way I read it was that you cannot store the energy indefinitely in a battery, maybe I'm wrong.

I'm seeing this as a tradeoff between harvesting everything and then it running away slowly into the void again and harvesting most of it and letting it sit there forever. Nevermind.

A fair point, but I think the break-even point would be far too high, especially given that generation downtime is quite short.

[Sturm58]

OK i did it.

Aquatuner is turned on when solar panel system reaches over 90% in battery charge (not visible on the screenshot).

It starts heating up a mix of steam and super-coolant (still in liquid form on the screenshot).

I am running super-coolant through the pipes and dump the cold in ice biome and I'm also cooling the turbine with that.

Once the solar system battery charge drops below 20% i start the turbine.

I am controlling the steam temperature beneath the turbine so that it stays below 250 although I'm not sure if that is needed.

There i is also a system that checks if super coolant in pipes is over -260 (if it's colder it does nothing in the aquatuner but eats power).

I am also using some extra heat from the rocket.

 

 

[Darkin Coaled]

I think the top temperature for a 5 port turbine is 220, afterwards you're just bleeding off heat and not getting any power from it.

[nakomaru]

Should be 195C for 5 ports. You can just see at what temp it reaches 850W output.

[badgamer123]

with extra extra labor,gas grass might be the most efficient power storage.

(use the power to light up lux)

[mathmanican]

8 hours ago, Sturm58 said:

There i is also a system that checks if super coolant in pipes is over -260 (if it's colder it does nothing in the aquatuner but eats power

You can use a liquid tepidizer (not exploited) to keep your super coolant warm enough. As @nakomaru said earlier, there is only one building that can heat things up at a power savings.  The costly part is transferring that heat, but you can still use it to get the heat. 

[Sturm58]

3 hours ago, mathmanican said:

You can use a liquid tepidizer (not exploited) to keep your super coolant warm enough. As @nakomaru said earlier, there is only one building that can heat things up at a power savings.  The costly part is transferring that heat, but you can still use it to get the heat. 

I still consider that an exploit. Tepadizer does not go above 100C.

[mathmanican]

52 minutes ago, Sturm58 said:

Tepadizer does not go above 100C.

The tepidizer can be kept at 0C, just keep the supercoolant warm so you can keep transfering heat.  It never needs to go above 0C to still make heat. 

[nakomaru]

Using the tepidizer in any way is cheating. It's too efficient!

[Sturm58]

This build is working great!

I store a huge amount of energy in super coolant gas. Steam turbines turn on when my power grid drops below 10%.

I also use the heat from my two rockets.

There is also a sensor that checks if the super coolant is above 900C. If it is it deletes that heat with turbines even if my power grid is >10%.

[OxCD]

On 02/08/2019 at 5:35 PM, Yunru said:

It's not possible. Whatever system you use to generate heat, or convert it back to electricity, is going to have more loss than the run-off that the batteries would have.

My exact thought.

Using an AT (or any other system that could bring you enough heat) to generate and stock heat is costing so much watts that I doubt battery run-off will cost more over a long period.

Or you should use your AT to cool something useful, but I guess it will have to run 100% uptime if you have a large steam chamber with decent pressure.

[Sturm58]

43 minutes ago, OxCD said:

My exact thought.

Using an AT (or any other system that could bring you enough heat) to generate and stock heat is costing so much watts that I doubt battery run-off will cost more over a long period.

Or you should use your AT to cool something useful, but I guess it will have to run 100% uptime if you have a large steam chamber with decent pressure.

Hmm perhaps but then again - batteries have limited capacity where as this method can practically store an infinite amount of heat..

plus it's fun!

[OxCD]

28 minutes ago, Sturm58 said:

Hmm perhaps but then again - batteries have limited capacity where as this method can practically store an infinite amount of heat..

plus it's fun!

It's not "infinite", it's set by SHC & quantity of liquid/gas used, heat chamber size, and AT overheat t°, which is 1025°C max. Only liquid/gas quantity can be exceeded, but you'll need exploits.

Nevertheless, I agree it's fun to setup and to look doing its job as expected

 

EDIT : well I correct something, you can use solid that become gas before 1025°C to provide infinite quantity, I agree. Phosphorite is an example, could exist others. Then you'll be limited by your amount of phosphorite, which could be... unlimited ^^