Boiler / steam engine ratio

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Ohlmann
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Boiler / steam engine ratio

Post by Ohlmann »

Hello.

It seem people have found a "perfect" ratio for boiler to steam engine. I would like to know which ratio it is, and why it work better than other.

boro
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Re: Boiler / steam engine ratio

Post by boro »

One pump can support 10 engines and you need 14 boilers for that (or 13 for 99% max load)

Holy-Fire
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Re: Boiler / steam engine ratio

Post by Holy-Fire »

Boilers have a power output of 390kW, steam engines 510kW, hence the roughly 1.3:1 ratio.

Of course, the power generated is the minimum between what the boilers can support and what the engines can, so if you build extra of one of them you'll have built it for nothing (though it's not a huge problem).

Additionally, each pump can support 10 steam engines (with more than that there's not enough water pressure), so the ratio is usually 1 pump, 10 engines, 13 boilers (or 14 boilers if you're much more concerned about wasting engines than boilers).

Rahjital
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Re: Boiler / steam engine ratio

Post by Rahjital »

Well, you can do much more with 100kW of electricity than with 100kW of fuel energy since burner machinery is much less efficient. Just compare the burner inserter with a regular inserter - the burner consumer more than 10 times the energy but is slower than the normal energy. It doesn't really matter if your boilers consume more energy than the steam engines produce because electric machines are so efficient.

Holy-Fire
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Re: Boiler / steam engine ratio

Post by Holy-Fire »

Rahjital wrote:Well, you can do much more with 100kW of electricity than with 100kW of fuel energy since burner machinery is much less efficient. Just compare the burner inserter with a regular inserter - the burner consumer more than 10 times the energy but is slower than the normal energy. It doesn't really matter if your boilers consume more energy than the steam engines produce because electric machines are so efficient.
That's not really relevant to the OP. Boilers work at 50% efficiency (every 2 MJ of worth of fuel translates to 1 MJ of electric energy), which is a consideration when comparing, e.g., steel furnaces and electric furnaces. However, it is still the case that if you put more than 1.3 boilers per steam engine, the spare boilers will just sit idle.

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