Power shortage, thoughts?

[phod]

Hi all,

I have a base around cycle 450. I only have one natural gas geyser that's not all that great, and it's about to go dormant for 70ish cycles. I've been working on steel for bunker tiles, I'm probably 80% done covering the top of the map, but I'd like to look to the skies at some point, so I'll still need lots more steel. I was a bit slow getting steel going, I had a refinery meltdown and had to recover from that.  These are the things I'm considering to produce more power, but I thought I'd see what you guys think.

I have 33 tons of coal, and a good amount left on the map, but I know there are other uses for that, so I'd like to conserve it.

I have 9 dupes, plenty of oxygen and food, 1mkcal+, with a second electrolyzer nearly done, so I thought maybe pick up some extra dupes to pedal me through the shortage with hamster wheels. My current electrolyzer build creates excess hydrogen for power, so finishing the second one would help add even more power, but I expect I'd actually have too much oxygen then, and I'm not sure what I'd do with it.

I've never played with the steam generator. I know they're finicky, but I thought of plopping one on top of either my copper or iron volcano, using my excess pwater (I have 2 slush geysers, and lots in storage) to cool the volcano and create steam, but I'm not sure if that's enough to get even intermittent use from a steam generator. 

Since they've added dirt as a requirement for fertilizer synthesizers, are they still a useful / sustainable way to create some natural gas?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks!

[Neotuck]

How did your refinary meltdown?  I always drip oil in my refinaries at 100g/s to keep them from overheating

But to answer your question, the coal option is your best bet and true you'll need to save some for the kiln but not much.  

Are you ranching stone hatches?  A full stable of stone hatches can keep a coal generators running non stop, more if you are keeping it automated with a smart battery.

 

[phod]

7 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

How did your refinary meltdown?  I always drip oil in my refinaries at 100g/s to keep them from overheating

It had been cooled with pwater, and I let it loop through too much. In the end, I decided to use oil as coolant, then run the hot oil through some of my excess slush geyser pwater. When that gets too hot, I run it through a sieve, then once through an aquatuner and add it to my clean, cool water source. Before it's released though, it goes through a couple liquid storage tanks in chlorine to kill off the germs. I know they don't matter much, but I don't like seeing yellow floaties in my water.

 

Edit: I see your note about stone hatches, no, I haven't been ranching them. I'll look into some guides on that.

Thanks

[Saturnus]

If instead of using oil to cool the metal refineries you use petroleum, you can crack crude oil into petroleum and use petroleum generators.

You can do the same with heat from volcanoes or the big magma chambers in the bottom. There should be at least one oil well on any given map so that a fairly sustainable energy source.

[Lurve]

Bases require surprisingly little power if you're willing to coast for a bit.  Use the downtime to build a gas storage array for when the geyser starts up again.  Or dig down to oil or up to solars (since you already have steel).

[Neotuck]

Oh we are talking about metal refinaries?  I was talking about my oil refinary.  I drip oil on it to keep it from overheating.

[phod]

On 9/30/2018 at 3:23 PM, Sasza22 said:

300^oC will change to steam instantly and damage the dupes as well as heat up the area. You need to empty the machine bofere the stuck water goes over 100^oC. If it does the only way to empty it safely is to seal it off and deconstruct using the corner build exploit, then cool the steam somehow.

Yeah, I realized what I did wrong, and I fixed it by sealing it off, then using some metal tiles and wheezeworts until it was reasonably cool again.

18 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

If instead of using oil to cool the metal refineries you use petroleum, you can crack crude oil into petroleum and use petroleum generators.

You can do the same with heat from volcanoes or the big magma chambers in the bottom. There should be at least one oil well on any given map so that a fairly sustainable energy source.

Am I understanding that you mean to use the petroleum as coolant in the metal refinery until it's close to phase shift, then burn it in the generator? That's an approach I've never tried. As far as the oil well, yes I have some, they require clean water, yes? If that's the case, I'd need to boil or sieve some of my pwater. I suppose I could use the dirt anyway.

12 minutes ago, Lurve said:

Bases require surprisingly little power if you're willing to coast for a bit.  Use the downtime to build a gas storage array for when the geyser starts up again.  Or dig down to oil or up to solars (since you already have steel).

I do have a good sized storage tank for the NG now. It took me far too long to find the geyser, which is funny, because it's like right next to my base.

 

[Saturnus]

Just now, phod said:

Am I understanding that you mean to use the petroleum as coolant in the metal refinery until it's close to phase shift, then burn it in the generator?

Not exactly. I meant using a petroleum loop and make sure the petroleum gets to above 450-460C where you can use it to heat up crude oil to 400C where it changes into petroleum on it's own.

[Neotuck]

3 minutes ago, phod said:

As far as the oil well, yes I have some, they require clean water, yes? If that's the case, I'd need to boil or sieve some of my pwater. I suppose I could use the dirt anyway.

Do you mean to tap into an oil well?

Unless you have run out of oil in the oil biome you shouldn't need to do that.  And I doubt your oil biomes are dry by cycle 450

[phod]

3 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

Not exactly. I meant using a petroleum loop and make sure the petroleum gets to above 450-460C where you can use it to heat up crude oil to 400C where it changes into petroleum on it's own.

Aha, now I understand, that does sound quite handy. Is there a way to do this without using space materials?

1 minute ago, Neotuck said:

Do you mean to tap into an oil well?

Unless you have run out of oil in the oil biome you shouldn't need to do that.  And I doubt your oil biomes are dry by cycle 450

Nope, I'm far from out of oil. Just thinking aloud.. or typing aloud.. or something.

[Neotuck]

Just now, phod said:

Nope, I'm far from out of oil. Just thinking aloud.. or typing aloud.. or something.

Oil refinaries are also a good way to supplement your NG.  Be sure you have a pump nearby that sends it to you NG tank to help with the geyser down time

[Saturnus]

18 minutes ago, phod said:

Aha, now I understand, that does sound quite handy. Is there a way to do this without using space materials?

Several builds already on the forum. I'll see if I can find some of them if others don't beat me to it.

[Neotuck]

A single oil refinary can run 1 NG generator and 2.5 petroleum generators without smart battery automation

[Cantouki]

Had a Metal Refinery meltdown to. I just left it and made a new one.  If you use polluted water as coolant remember that every time the temperature increases 56C. There's always the water sieve to get rid of hot polluted water.

Coal is good for early and mid game. Just explore the map and dig out coal areas.  As Neotuck advised, make a few 96 tile Stables with Hatches/Stone Hatches for lots of coal.

Fertilizer synthesizers for natural gas is not usefull anymore.

[phod]

Thanks for all the help and information, I appreciate it very much. I hadn't really paid much attention to hatches, and as of this moment, I only see a few cracked tiles here and there. Hopefully there are still some around.

I forgot to mention, I do have a little box of petroleum I'd been storing up, if the hatch farm idea falls through, maybe I'll tap into that.

[Segato]

I currently run a power station with 3 Hidrogen + 2 Coal Generators, if we add the buff from Tinkering the Powert Station thats around 4.5kw, keep exploring the map and you will find more Hidrogen+NatGas geysers

[Neotuck]

1 minute ago, Segato said:

I currently run a power station with 3 Hidrogen + 2 Coal Generators, if we add the buff from Tinkering the Powert Station thats around 4.5kw, keep exploring the map and you will find more Hidrogen+NatGas geysers

Not every map has hydrogen vents or more than one natural gas vent

[Xadhoom]

As some other people have stated, a good hatch farm for coal is nice, don't limit the hatch farm to just 96 tiles though, its ONLY necessary to tame them faster. i have 2 HUGE areas of 600 tiles, 1700 tiles, essentially outside and inside my base for my hatches, with at least 20 hatches in each.

i like solar power, so i would not block the entire top of map with regular bunker tiles, but id put bunker doors on most of it with automation on the doors and auto miners to clear debris. The autominers need to be of steel, or thermium to not get heat damage.

then id have a big battery bank to store the solarpanels power:

once the main grid in base needs power i activate the transformer to send power to main base.

 

i usually build my bases with backup power in mind and use smart batteries to turn them on/off.

1. Solarpower

2. Steampower (if i have made one)

3. Hydrogen (with rockets, i tend to send it to get made to liquid for fuel)

4. Natural gas

5. Coal

6. Petroleum

in my latest base i actually backed up my NG, cause solar, Steam and hydrogen gives all i need. that is after having made 20T+ of liquid hydrogen.

[Ixenzo]

16 minutes ago, Cantouki said:

every time the temperature increases 56C

They think it be like it is, but it don't. If you only let in pwater that is strictly 63 degrees (this leaves 0,4 deg buffer + ~3 from enthalpy simulation) and put steel production on a loop, it will break the pipes rather soon. Why is that is another topic of discussion.

[DaveSatx]

8 hours ago, Xadhoom said:

As some other people have stated, a good hatch farm for coal is nice, don't limit the hatch farm to just 96 tiles though, its ONLY necessary to tame them faster. i have 2 HUGE areas of 600 tiles, 1700 tiles, essentially outside and inside my base for my hatches, with at least 20 hatches in each.

i like solar power, so i would not block the entire top of map with regular bunker tiles, but id put bunker doors on most of it with automation on the doors and auto miners to clear debris. The autominers need to be of steel, or thermium to not get heat damage.

then id have a big battery bank to store the solarpanels power:

once the main grid in base needs power i activate the transformer to send power to main base.

 

i usually build my bases with backup power in mind and use smart batteries to turn them on/off.

1. Solarpower

2. Steampower (if i have made one)

3. Hydrogen (with rockets, i tend to send it to get made to liquid for fuel)

4. Natural gas

5. Coal

6. Petroleum

in my latest base i actually backed up my NG, cause solar, Steam and hydrogen gives all i need. that is after having made 20T+ of liquid hydrogen.

I constantly forget I don't need to limit myself to 96 and the power plant buff...

[Cantouki]

16 hours ago, Ixenzo said:

They think it be like it is, but it don't. If you only let in pwater that is strictly 63 degrees (this leaves 0,4 deg buffer + ~3 from enthalpy simulation) and put steel production on a loop, it will break the pipes rather soon. Why is that is another topic of discussion.

63 degrees is to high, 60 will not break pipes

[Craigjw]

600 tiles for 20 hatches!!!  Is your colony named Beverly Hills by any chance?

My strategy has been to add two ranches, both 96 tiles, but one with auto wrangle enabled at 8.  Of course, by the time these are fully up and running with stone hatches, I've almost completely switched to renewable sources such as NG and Oil wells.

If you boil the crude to crack the oil into petrol and NG, you are going to get much better power gains than using a manual refinery.

Volcano Farming

Rather than directly plugging in a steam turbine to the metal volcano, which would be too infrequent to use, you can disassociate the cooling via an aquatuner.  The aquatuner cools the volcano, then other liquid cools the aquatuner, this secondary cooling heats up the steam turbine.  The aquatuner evens out the heat generation, giving a better distribution of heat over time, which is more useful in terms of applying this to a steam generator.  Plus, you get room temperature metal.

Be sure to send the coolant to the Liquid O2 and Hydrogen production before cooling the volcano.  Just use a heat exchanger to swap heat from the coolant to the water.  ie, big metal block, water goes in on left and comes out on right, coolant goes in on right, comes out on left.

Spoiler

 

 

[Ixenzo]

42 minutes ago, Cantouki said:

63 degrees is to high, 60 will not break pipes

The point is that 63 isn't too high, as it has 0.4~3.4 degrees of heat buffer. Unless the refinery actually applies the supposed 70 degrees instead of 56 n some obscured way. Or does phase change in pipes not have the 3 degrees both ways enthalpy simulation?

[phod]

I took some time last night to dig cracked tiles to see if I could find any hatches. I don't know where they went, but I didn't find a single one. I imagine they're all stuck together somewhere and I just haven't found them. I don't see any reason they'd have died. 

Thanks again for all the comments and reading material. I'll pick an option once I get through all of this information.

[Jumpp]

Also? If you're in a power crunch, it may be time to give your power use a good going-over. If you haven't done it in some time, there may be a fair amount of waste. If you're running any filters, consider replacing them with element sensors and shutoffs. If you have any cooling noodles that are pump-driven, maybe replace it with a reservoir (free built-in pump.)