Adding nuclear reactors isn't getting me the power I need

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Mauslag PIngman
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Adding nuclear reactors isn't getting me the power I need

Post by Mauslag PIngman »

I have a lot of coal fired steam engines for power, but I started adding nuclear power about 50 hours ago. For awhile I was getting about 320mw electricity which is no longer enough. I added a reactor and am now getting 300 and it isn't enough. I used to get steam coming out of all my turbines. Not anymore. This is what I don't understand. The reactors all have plenty of fuel and they're getting the 100% bonus, but there always seems to be a steam shortage even though I've got about 4 pumps in the lake, widely spaced bringing water over to feed the many heat exchangers, probably about 8 heat exchangers for 2 nuclear reactors. All the pipes have water. The steam connections seem sound. Electric pole placement seems to cover all the turbines and link to the power grid. I put down storage tanks after the steam turbines to save up excess steam but most of them don't have much steam. They used to have more steam a few days ago. Lots of turbines are generating electricity with what appears to be no steam. How can that work? Why don't they have steam? Sadly, I think most of my power is still coming from coal. I'm getting appallingly little energy from my nuclear.

There was one point a few days ago where the turbines weren't running and it turned out I hadn't put down electric poles. I placed the poles when I found that condition and immediately got steam coming out of everything, but everything is linked to electricity now.
all heat exchangers have no steam and 100% water. Temperature about 992 but one is 984.
I have no accumulators.

The setup looks like this [steam storage] =[steam turbine]=[heat exchanger]=reactor[heat exchanger]=[steam turbine]=[steam storage]


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Re: Adding nuclear reactors isn't getting me the power I need

Post by betrok »

For full utilization of 2 reactors you need 16 exchangers.

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eradicator
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Re: Adding nuclear reactors isn't getting me the power I need

Post by eradicator »

Mauslag PIngman wrote: but there always seems to be a steam shortage
You're forgetting the golden rule of factorio: If you don't have enough. You need to make more.
So if you have identified a steam shortage you need to add more things that make steam. If that leads to a water/heat shortage you add more for those. Etcpp.
If you're struggling with nuclear in general there's lots of threads on the forum with example builds. 1GW is pretty common for a basic small setup. Heat exchangers above 500 degree is a sure sign that you have either too much heat or not enough water.

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Re: Adding nuclear reactors isn't getting me the power I need

Post by Mauslag PIngman »

Progress! Now I have 2 reactors instead of 4, 16 heat exchangers instead of about 10 and I'm getting more power. Things are in the green again. The reactors turn themselves off and I don't see my storage tanks filling with steam but there is some steam.

So I've cut way back on my nuclear fuel consumption and I have good power. Big improvement, but it seems like I could do better.

There are two temperature readings on the heat exchanger. The one is always 500 and the other is around 950 to 993.

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Re: Adding nuclear reactors isn't getting me the power I need

Post by bobucles »

eradicator wrote:You're forgetting the golden rule of factorio: XX You don't have enough. You need to make more.
Fixed. I don't know how people keep messing this up! :lol:

It can be difficult to know how much water you need for a reactor, but nuke plants need an enormous amount of water lines. For reference, a dedicated pump on a dedicated water line gives 114MW worth of water. Enough for 11 heat exchangers with some slack, or 12 with some buffer. Adding additional pumps to that line gives very SMALL gains. A single pump nearly saturates a pipe on its own. Trying to stuff in more water pumps won't help because pipe mechanics struggle to carry extra fluid over a short distance. A single pump is fairly optimal and will cover reasonably long distances with little loss.

Don't death blob pipes. Make sure each water line is its own line for maximum water flow. Same thing for steam pipes.

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Re: Adding nuclear reactors isn't getting me the power I need

Post by eradicator »

bobucles wrote:
eradicator wrote:You're forgetting the golden rule of factorio: If you don't have enough. You need to make more.
Fixed. I don't know how people keep messing this up! :lol:
You're mistakenly assuming that the "if" condition could ever be false. "If the earth is a sphere then i can walk around it." I did in fact quite carefully chose my wording :P.

Also yea...pipes and water. Basically pipe lines should never connect to each other. A pipe should start at a pump and end in a row of exchangers. Storing water in tanks only reduces the flow rate. Speaking of which...use underground pipes whenever you need to build 3+ tiles straight or you're sacrificing flow rate for no good reason.

Glad you managed to improve so far ;).

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Re: Adding nuclear reactors isn't getting me the power I need

Post by Mauslag PIngman »

I have two other reactors. I think I'm going to start from scratch and build as you advised with water pipes leading to every fifth heat exchanger or so and multiple steam pipes going from turbines to storage. The game shows pipes full, but they don't show backup or excessive pressure. I had assumed that steam or water would just move faster through the pipes if there was an excess amount of it. Would be cool if a water pipe that had a lot of water pressing on it would glow a little right at the junction. That way you'd know you need more pipes leading out of the area.

Right now I need to download a book of blueprints. I know how to download blueprints but not a whole book full of them. How do you do that?

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Re: Adding nuclear reactors isn't getting me the power I need

Post by Mr. Tact »

Same process, the paste is just bigger.
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bobucles
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Re: Adding nuclear reactors isn't getting me the power I need

Post by bobucles »

You're mistakenly assuming that the "if" condition could ever be false. "If the earth is a sphere then i can walk around it." I did in fact quite carefully chose my wording :P.
You're wasting UPS by testing a conditional statement that is always true. Your megabase is disqualified!

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Re: Adding nuclear reactors isn't getting me the power I need

Post by Mauslag PIngman »

I built a 2 reactor powerplant with sixteen heat exchangers feeding into storage tanks. 2 storage tanks per heat exchanger. Then I had two steam turbines for each heat exchanger for a total of 32. I had water coming in from the left in 2 places and on the right in 2 places and I didn't get any steam or power for a long long time. Then I added 4 more pumps, the water lines coming in from the other end of the heat exchangers. Instantly got steam and pretty soon the storage tanks were full. This was my 5th and 6th reactor. Total of as much as 400mw. Had been getting as little as 277 before, but still seems like I'm not getting much power. I also tried taking off as many as 12 of the steam turbines and there wasn't much effect. Still got about the same amount of power. The power I get just depends on demand. I've seen some people say they get 1600 mw but they must need that much to get that, right? How much would my powerplants produce at a maximum?

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Re: Adding nuclear reactors isn't getting me the power I need

Post by bobucles »

Nuclear reactors buffer up an enormous amount of energy and you can temporarily pull out more power than the system is really capable of. If your reactor is pulling more than its production then you will find the reactor gradually losing temperature until its energy output reaches a steady state. This will take a few minutes.

The total sustained heat output of your plant is based on your active reactors. 1 reactor is 40MW. A pair of reactors is 2x40 +100% => 160MW. 2x2 is 4x40 +200% => 480MW. Every pair of reactors tacked on the end (for a 2 by X reactor )is another 2x40 +300% => 320MW.
The power I get just depends on demand.
It takes a doctorate to understand the factorio power graph. :lol:
If everything is in the green then it works fine.

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Re: Adding nuclear reactors isn't getting me the power I need

Post by eradicator »

bobucles wrote:
You're mistakenly assuming that the "if" condition could ever be false. "If the earth is a sphere then i can walk around it." I did in fact quite carefully chose my wording :P.
You're wasting UPS by testing a conditional statement that is always true. Your megabase is disqualified!
You derailed the thread while you were in it. You instantly die on impact.

@Maustag
I think it would be quite useful if you uploaded a few pictures of the reactor you're currently using, that makes it a lot more easy to help. From your description it sounds like you're wasting too much flow overall on unnessecary steam tanks and circular pipes and probably without any pumps too. Btw for testing the real output of your reactor you can give yourself an EEI and set it to maximum power demand (and test it on an isolated network), this ensures your reactor can run at full power. The larger the reactor the longer it takes to reach equilibrium.

Code: Select all

/c game.player.insert('electric-energy-interface')

Mauslag PIngman
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Re: Adding nuclear reactors isn't getting me the power I need

Post by Mauslag PIngman »

bobucles wrote:Nuclear reactors buffer up an enormous amount of energy and you can temporarily pull out more power than the system is really capable of. If your reactor is pulling more than its production then you will find the reactor gradually losing temperature until its energy output reaches a steady state. This will take a few minutes.

The total sustained heat output of your plant is based on your active reactors. 1 reactor is 40MW. A pair of reactors is 2x40 +100% => 160MW. 2x2 is 4x40 +200% => 480MW. Every pair of reactors tacked on the end (for a 2 by X reactor )is another 2x40 +300% => 320MW.
The power I get just depends on demand.
It takes a doctorate to understand the factorio power graph. :lol:
If everything is in the green then it works fine.
One of my nuclear plants has 4 reactors in a square. Each one is getting a 200% bonus so it should produce 480 mw right there, right? I have two more nuke plants. Each one has 2 reactors so they should produce 160mw each. 480 + 160 + 160 = 800 mw. In addition to that I have a few dozen old timey coal fired things. Bottom line is I'm lucky to get 550 mw out of this whole system. I just converted this latest system from a 2 reactor system to a 4 reactor system and the whole thing was crashing at about 520 and giving me a yellow line. Maybe I'll get more with the new set up.

My 4 reactors just have two heat pipes coming out in a line so some of the heat exchangers are 7 heat exchangers away from the reactor and they're about 100 degrees less hot than the centrally located exchangers. I added more water lines on one side because I thought I didn't have enough water and so not enough steam. That seemed to work. I ended up with a lot of steam until I hooked up more steam turbines. Do I want more steam turbines? I'm hoping they give me more power when I need it, but I think they drain steam when the power isn't needed so what's the point of having storage tanks full of steam when your steam is leaking out of the turbines even when they're not making power?

The production line right now is about 60% and very green. Putting out 520mw. If my system was working right, the production line would probably be about 35% of the way across since I think I should be able to make about 1000 mw total.

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Re: Adding nuclear reactors isn't getting me the power I need

Post by bobucles »

In addition to that I have a few dozen old timey coal fired things. Bottom line is I'm lucky to get 550 mw out of this whole system. I just converted this latest system from a 2 reactor system to a 4 reactor system and the whole thing was crashing at about 520 and giving me a yellow line. Maybe I'll get more with the new set up.
All steam engines and steam turbines share the burden. You should probably unhook your coal burners.

Here is the quick and easy troubleshooting method for your reactor:

1) There is not enough water. Your heat exchangers will have an empty water storage or may not show a water storage at all.

2) The heat can not reach your heat exchangers. Your long distance heat pipes will be 500-505C, even when your core reactor is 900C+.

3) The steam output is clogged and can not reach the turbines. Your heat exchanger steam storage will be full. Do not point long rows of heat exchangers at each other, this will quickly clog the pipe.

4) Your steam turbines are out of steam. Their "available performance" will go down (but it may still be green and does not show up as a production shortage on the power graph. The power graph is pretty confusing.) Your turbine fluid consumed won't be 60/60.

5) You don't have enough turbines. There will be a power shortage.

6) Everything is okay. There is surplus steam in your turbines and your power is in the green.

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