[Suggestion] Power: Geothermal Generator

[Imendil]

Currently in the world we have several clean ways to produce energy:
- Wind turbine - this might be possible in the game, without any inputs / outputs, if we could use pressure differences for power making
- Solar panels - Well, there is no access to outside, therefore no stars to draw energy from
- Hydro generator - Usage of water movement, same as wind turbine could be possible in the game, without any inputs / outputs - Waterfalls!
- Geothermal generation!

Imagine this:

Ultimate clean power source: Geothermal generator, located at the very end of current Tech-Tree

Input: Steam in temperature: 150 - 200 Celsius degree - it's our job to watch out for overheating machines
Output: Hot water ~90 degrees
Power output: 1.5 kW + (it's up to you Klei devs)

Currently in game with need of manual processing of crude oil (or need to heat it) with quite inefficient hydrogen-generator, my 300 cycle colony is still mainly using hamster wheels. Usage of water, steam and magma would allow us to establish efficient power generation with no drawback (unless magma get's too cold, that would be a lot of cycles)

Notes: Wiki Link - Geothermal generator

[Gooblender]

I like this idea, it is feasible too. With few exceptions conventional power plants IRL are based on steam driven turbines to generate the power so technologically capping a steam vent would be a viable technology, you could then direct the steam or even consensed hot water to a location of your choice. Geothermal is the same though you have to feed the water  through a ground look to get steam to feed a turbine.

Wall mounted pressure differential turbines could also be viable as the high pressure pushes the gas through the turbine to the low pressure side. So long as you can keep the low pressure under control with pumps. This sort of design could also make things interesting if high pressure gas started putting stress on the surfaces (like water). Material selection would then be more vital for construction of such a system.

[Zarquan]

I would also like to see some real world schemes like this, but I think they would be overpowered because energy is not conserved in this world.  I believe most of these schemes would work out to simply be completely free power.

Hyrdo-power is problematic.  If you can gain energy from that, then that energy is free, as moving of water up can be completely free if you were to use a perpetual motion waterfall scheme.  Air power suffers from similar problems

I'm not sure about that setup for geothermal power.  Geothermal should require a connection to something like magma or a geyser to work.  At least, something should be very hot.  I think that this is a more important feature than it the inputs and outputs.  Unfortunately, heat is also very cheap, as one tepidizer outputs far more heat than it takes in power, so any conversion from heat to energy would have to have a very low energy return per unit heat energy in the object or the energy could turn out to be essentially free.

I would like to see things like this, but unfortunately, I do not think it is plausible without overhauling the physics of the world.

[goboking]

At least with a geothermal generator we'd have to deal with massive amounts of heat.  If you can devise a system that produces steam without the heat killing your base I'd say you've earned yourself some cheap, efficient power generations.

Solar panels are a bit different, though.  Theoretically they'd be hassle-free energy once researched and installed.  There are a few ways they could balance them (marginal power generation, damage from debris that needs to be periodically repaired, or hostile creatures on the asteroid surface that need to be dispatched), but on paper solar power looks like it would be a no-brainer for every colony manager.

[Imendil]

This is the point of geothermal generator. You have to create perfect system that will deal up with 1500+ C magma and not kill your base.

5 hours ago, Zarquan said:

Hyrdo-power is problematic.  If you can gain energy from that, then that energy is free, as moving of water up can be completely free if you were to use a perpetual motion waterfall scheme.  Air power suffers from similar problems

I would consider it as bug and I don't like using bugs for my advantage. But there are normal ways to achieve waterfalls, with just digging and building

[Zarquan]

Even without that bug, you can move 10 kg/s from the bottom of the map to the top for 240 W/  That means the water falling from that height would have to either provide less energy than or it would give free energy.

[Imendil]

Yes, in case of hydro with current pumps you are right. Their load is not connected to the distance or high by any means.