How do you power your base?

[alficles]

In the long term, how do you approach power? I see a few main sources of power in the long term:

Hatch-coal: You can feed renewable stuff to hatches to make coal. This approach is limited to the number of hatches you find, though. In my last few maps, I've been unable to support more than 6 generators off of hatches.

Oil: Oil isn't automatic, and in terms of energy, it isn't worth all that much power per oil well. It's worth tapping, but mostly for the renewable plastic.

Natural Gas Geysers: Each of these only supplies a couple generators, so these are valuable, but won't run a base.

Dupe Power: Imprison a few dozen dupes and make them run on treadmills. Use only vomiting dupes, so that whenever they get upset or need to pee, you can collect it down below and feed it to fertilizer makers for NG to run your generators. You need quite a few dupes for this to work, but dupes are renewable and relatively easy to keep alive, so it's not a bad option.

What do y'all use?

[GreatGameDota]

NGG plus some fert makers is the cleanest and easiest way to do long term power. It's so easy in fact that some people think it's rather exploity.

[bzgzd]

59 minutes ago, alficles said:

Natural Gas Geysers: Each of these only supplies a couple generators, so these are valuable, but won't run a base.

My main power system is as mentioned by GreatGameDota:

1x NG geyser + 75% Steam geyser => autonomous no maintenance 4kW+ for base using 12 generators and a lot (26) fertilizer makers (can be done 2 times)

I still didn't build petroleum generator...

 

[GuyPerfect]

I've been running on Hatch Coal just because of its accessibility. Once the cold biome I build my power plant in starts to melt the Polluted Ice, I can use it to run a Carbon Skimmer.

[alficles]

14 minutes ago, bzgzd said:

1x NG geyser + 75% Steam geyser

Where are you getting the polluted water here? I see the NG, but what do you feed the fertilizer makers? And how are you using the water from the geyser?

[Saturnus]

1 hour ago, alficles said:

In the long term, how do you approach power? I see a few main sources of power in the long term:

Hatch-coal: You can feed renewable stuff to hatches to make coal. This approach is limited to the number of hatches you find, though. In my last few maps, I've been unable to support more than 6 generators off of hatches.

Oil: Oil isn't automatic, and in terms of energy, it isn't worth all that much power per oil well. It's worth tapping, but mostly for the renewable plastic.

Natural Gas Geysers: Each of these only supplies a couple generators, so these are valuable, but won't run a base.

Dupe Power: Imprison a few dozen dupes and make them run on treadmills. Use only vomiting dupes, so that whenever they get upset or need to pee, you can collect it down below and feed it to fertilizer makers for NG to run your generators. You need quite a few dupes for this to work, but dupes are renewable and relatively easy to keep alive, so it's not a bad option.

What do y'all use?

A couple of misconceptions to point out.

The main source of oil is not oil wells. I don't think anyone bothers to tap the oil wells. And many maps doesn't even have any oil wells on the map now due to changes in map seeds. Instead, the main source of oil is from slicksters converting CO2 to oil.

Natural gas geysers is not the only source of natural gas. Converting polluted water into natural gas with fertilizer synths are the most common way of getting vast amounts of natural gas. However, the long term solution is to convert oil into natural gas by heating it.

8 minutes ago, alficles said:

Where are you getting the polluted water here? I see the NG, but what do you feed the fertilizer makers? And how are you using the water from the geyser?

You use the water to carbon skim the CO2 generated by the NGGs into polluted water, which in turn is turned into natural gas by fertilizer synths.

[alficles]

2 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

Instead, the main source of oil is from slicksters converting CO2 to oil.

Quite true, but you need a source of CO2 to make the oil.

 

2 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

Converting polluted water into natural gas with fertilizer synths are the most common way of getting vast amounts of natural gas

Right, but how are you getting your PO2?

3 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

However, the long term solution is to convert oil into natural gas by heating it.

Other than silly tepedizer bugs, the only way to heat oil into NG is with magma, which is a limited resource and not even that abundant.

[Saturnus]

Just now, alficles said:

Quite true, but you need a source of CO2 to make the oil.

The CO2 comes from natural gas generators mostly. This actually creates a positive feedback loop so you create more oil than you use, and you have to use some of the oil to make plastic or your map will be overflowing with oil.

1 minute ago, alficles said:

Right, but how are you getting your PO2?

PO2? 

1 minute ago, alficles said:

Other than silly tepedizer bugs, the only way to heat oil into NG is with magma, which is a limited resource and not even that abundant.

There's enough heat stored in the magma on any map to convert enough oil into natural gas to produce 20KW for a little over one million cycles.

[alficles]

1 minute ago, Saturnus said:

PO2

Poluted Oxygen.

[bzgzd]

20 minutes ago, alficles said:

Where are you getting the polluted water here? I see the NG, but what do you feed the fertilizer makers? And how are you using the water from the geyser?

As already mentioned by Saturnus:

Polluted water comes partially from generators but mostly from skimmers where is also steam geyser water used. (3.08347...kg)
Skimmer PW can also be used to cool down generators.
To have it really no maintenance I put in atmo sensor and gas pump to pump out PO2 that gets created out of PW in long run.

(https://i.imgur.com/lJMuEPn.png , https://i.imgur.com/lNU3Sk5.png)

 

[Saturnus]

Just now, alficles said:

Poluted Oxygen.

Still not following you. I don't really know what you're referring to. Care to elaborate in what context you think polluted oxygen is used in power generation?

[alficles]

Just now, Saturnus said:

Still not following you

That's cause I'm using the wrong words. Oops. I totally meant Polluted Water and said the wrong thing. However, it sounds like the answer is Carbon Skimmers, which I'd forgotten about, because I've been feeding my CO2 to my slicksters.

[Saturnus]

I should note that you might not be able to get to all the magma on the map as some is enclosed in neutronium but there's enough heat stored to fuel any practical power setup for longer than anyone would ever play a single map.

[clickrush]

@Saturnus is there still a way to set up the tepidizer to refine oil into gas w/o using naphtha?

[SackMaggie]

38 minutes ago, clickrush said:

@Saturnus is there still a way to set up the tepidizer to refine oil into gas w/o using naphtha?

if you exploit then yes

[Saturnus]

56 minutes ago, clickrush said:

@Saturnus is there still a way to set up the tepidizer to refine oil into gas w/o using naphtha?

I don't think naphtha was ever a prerequisite for setting up a tepidizer based oil gasification system.

[clickrush]

21 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

I don't think naphtha was ever a prerequisite for setting up a tepidizer based oil gasification system.

I thought that you need the gas pocket on the tepidizer to make it work.

[Saturnus]

Just now, clickrush said:

I thought that you need the gas pocket on the tepidizer to make it work.

Yes. But you certainly don't need naphtha to create that even in survival mode. 

[Kroning]

I have 2 NG generators. They produce for now 5700kJ per day, that's more than I need for now. I've made oil gen but still don't use it.

First NG uses water in scimmers to convert CO2 to PW to use it in fertilizers. Some how it produces too much NG, so I even stoped to use gas from geyser. But it still has like 57kg of NG inside of a chamber.

Second NG gen was build to get rid of PW from base and it uses gas from geyser and dumps CO2 to slicksters.

 

[Lifegrow]

Easiest way to get Polluted Water (don't worry @alficles we knew what you meant, Saturnus was just being difficult  ) is with showers.

If we're talking about generating power, using skimmers to make polluted water is not very smart when that same CO2 could be fed directly to slicksters - turned to oil, and cooked into natural gas. However, if you have it, converting excess pure water from steam geysers into polluted water is easy enough, and costs no power at all. That being said, using skimmers is waaaay less time/effort  

And as @Saturnus rightly said : 

8 hours ago, Saturnus said:

There's enough heat stored in the magma on any map to convert enough oil into natural gas to produce 20KW for a little over one million cycles.

Don't think that once your magma changes to igneous rock that it still isn't useful - it'll be more than hot enough... It only needs to be ~400 degrees Celsius to turn to petroleum, and around 540ish to evaporate into natural gas...

[Guest]

Getting polluted water isn't a huge issue. I have a set up with 11 gas generators based on 2 natural gas geysers and 17 synthesizers. The 17 synthesizers require 2,550 g/s, but you are already producing 742,5 g/s from the 11 generators alone. Using carbon skimmers to deal with the CO2, you are producing an astounding 3,025 g/s, so you are effectively netting out in the regard.

Things become a little more tricky once you use slicksters to deal with the CO2. However, a petroleum generator will generate 1250 g/s of polluted water alone, being already up to over 2000 g/s with the Natural Gas Generators (add one additional generator from the oil refinery). As @Lifegrow mentioned, your bathrooms can take of the difference easily. Infact, it's probably recommended to first use the water from the bathrooms to get rid of the germs.

Overall, my bases are bound early game that set up. 16 synthesizers and 1 gas geyser produce just enough to fill one gas pumps capacity to the brim. The second gas geyser gets the remaining synthesizer so it is able to feed 3 generators. 8,800W isn't bad at all, although producing that power comes with a lot of power consumers too: 2040W for the synthesizers, 480W for the 2 gas pumps, 240W for one water pump, and another 480W for the skimmers. You'll net out at 5560W, more if you optimise through automation.

 

I don't like to use coal generators. I find that once you run out of coal, it's a hassle to create more through hatches. So I don't use them I do use a hydrogen generator, but it's not a constant source of power and I more often than not I use the hydrogen for other applications, like the thermal device and as a cooling gas.

Once hitting oil (something I have not done yet in a none debug colony), I think things will change with additional power generated.

[mickaux]

I have 5 natural gas generators fed with 2 natgas geysers. With my automatized base, there's rarely a need to run all systems at once, however to prevent power outage I have 3 coal generators set on 60%, 40% and 30%, I saw all three working only two times so far (and I have been using this system for about 150 cycles right now).

About polluted water, I had a different strategy: as long as I needed clean water supply and couldn't find a steam geyser, my simple automation setting would heat polluted water and sieve it, however when the reservoir was full enough, it would send water directly to fertilizer makers. Then my hatches would convert it into coal, so now I have huge amount of fossil fuel to spend. Now I'm actually facing the problem of finding a good way to spend all my polluted water, as I don't need it for fertilizer makers anymore (2 natgas geysers are just enough), and I have all my clean water from the geyser.

[clickrush]

15 minutes ago, mickaux said:

I have 5 natural gas generators fed with 2 natgas geysers. With my automatized base, there's rarely a need to run all systems at once, however to prevent power outage I have 3 coal generators set on 60%, 40% and 30%, I saw all three working only two times so far (and I have been using this system for about 150 cycles right now).

About polluted water, I had a different strategy: as long as I needed clean water supply and couldn't find a steam geyser, my simple automation setting would heat polluted water and sieve it, however when the reservoir was full enough, it would send water directly to fertilizer makers. Then my hatches would convert it into coal, so now I have huge amount of fossil fuel to spend. Now I'm actually facing the problem of finding a good way to spend all my polluted water, as I don't need it for fertilizer makers anymore (2 natgas geysers are just enough), and I have all my clean water from the geyser.

Yeah I've ran into the same problem. At some point you have a ton of excess power, polluted water and water etc, so the "problem" is just to convert/destroy stuff so nothing overflows.

In my experience you can scale up nat gas generators way more than 5 if you feed them from 2 geysers and convert polluted water back to nat gas. But again, you most likely don't need it. But that is a good thing, because it gives the freedom of doing fancy stuff.

I actually set up a polluted water destroyer with door automation. to prevent overflow.

[UristMcKerman]

Oil -> gas = infinite energy. This is retarded that petrol gen produces only 0.33 per one gram of oil while you can produce 1.66

[mickaux]

2 hours ago, clickrush said:

At some point you have a ton of excess power, polluted water and water etc, so the "problem" is just to convert/destroy stuff so nothing overflows.

Well, maybe wasting water for liceloafs and CO2-O2 convertion is not a stupid thing to do at all

I guess it may change radically, when the devs will make food expectations matter. Producing high-quality food is something that actually requires quite a lot of energy, water and polluted water. Still, if you start producing crazy amounts of natgas by heating oil, you'll still have a lot of excess power.