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This has been suggested many, many times. Steam generators have to be introduced (and I assume that those will be some kind of atmospheric steam engines, since pipe physics in this game do not consider pressure). Those could do exactly the same that Stirling's - just consuming steam from a hot, hot, hot region and exhausting water, some heat and electric power.

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Realistically, the coal generator would have to be using a stirling engine already, since it doesn't use any water. Irl, any nuclear or coal power plant actually uses steam turbines to produce energy with the heat difference created by burning coal/radioactive decay. I'm not sure about the natural gas or hydrogen generators, I think irl those would be using turbines too.

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31 minutes ago, Michi01 said:

I'm not sure about the natural gas or hydrogen generators, I think irl those would be using turbines too.

Every single building size generator is just a fancy steam generator. I'm not too sure if you could make a giant combustion engine lol or if it's any better than a steam generator.

There are fuel cells that work with hydrogen or hydrocarbons but no one made them big enough for a powerplant. 

Sterlings are mainly used for solar power I think, since you can make giant solar concentrators with them much cheaper than using photovoltaics.

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Irl sterling engines are extremely poor for generating power, for a large number of reasons.  I'd say they're a co-generator at best, utilizing waste heat from a primary system.  As Michi says, I think that virtually every power generation system known to man uses a turbine, powered by either stream (most of them) or directly turning the electric generator (hydroelectric and wind - the latter useless here obviously).  Solar panels are, I think, the only 'effective' method of generating power without turning something, or a constant chemical input.  And solar panels in ONI make no sense without access to the asteroid surface.  Though for game purposes light-producing plants or animals could be made to work.  It would give shine bugs an actual practical use.

Klei has taken shortcuts with the coal and natgas, which is fine, they're lower tier tech.  But I am kind of hoping that at some point we get an actual steam turbine, and the player is forced to build their nuclear plant in all of it's pieces - refine the uranium, insert the rods in a holder, steamify water, through the turbine, profit!   As opposed to a single-point reactor like coal and natgas.  They could even be so devilish as to implement runaway heat generation, requiring the player to create an apparatus to automatically flood the rods occasionally to bleed off excess heat, then pump away the heated water to expose them again, or keep a constant flow.  But that may be a bit overkill.  I just imagine the rods overheating too much and burning their way all the way down to the neutronium base (which would neutralize them).  Could be wild.   But at the same time it may open up a lot of weird unintended avenues for power generation.  So I could also see them avoiding that route.

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1 hour ago, Michi01 said:

Don't those also use steam turbines most of the time?

My bad I got them mixed up.

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These are the sterling ones. The towers use molten salt to generate steam.

There are even ones that heat up water directly like these.

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1 hour ago, Michi01 said:

Aren't gas turbines used as well? I think there's also power plants that use gas and steam turbines

Ahh right forgot about those jetengines :p

 

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The machine could just be a shower sized device, you place it between a hot and cold medium and power is generated up to a point where there's no difference between the two. Practicality suggests it would be a variable output generator it would be better to describe it's production in terms of joules and give it some capacity .... however.

Alternatively, you could simply restrict the rate of temperature equalization and cap the wattage - this would be more in line with current power sources - I don't imagine it would produce more than 240 watts but it would be nice for those fringe areas or next to geysers.

For those not in the know about Sterling engines - it simply moves a gas between opposing sides of a piston. The hot gas expands on one side, the cold gas contracts on the other, the piston moves and work is done. There are many different designs regarding how the movement of the piston is translated to mechanical/rotary output but they all generally rely on the aforementioned principle.

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