Factorio Forums

Hi,

there is an ongoing discussion about storing energy (eg from solar panels) and use it later. This mod aims at introducing a way of doing this. Since it is not possible to create an entity which stores energy as an accumulator would do, I store the energy in items, named "Compressed coal" and "Power packs".

Compressed Coal:
- Created from one coal.
- Creation process needs the exact amount of energy one item of coal is providing.
- Has the heating value of two coal.

Power Pack
- Created from pure energy
- Creation process needs the exact amount of energy the power pack is providing.
- Has the heating value of one coal.

If the creation process is fueled by solar power one can create fuel which is ~50% green (compressed coal) or 100% green (power pack). It becomes possible to re-use solar power at night. The conversion is done via the energy processor, a modified assembly machine. It's all about the solar panels. Creating compressed coal / energy packs with steam energy doesn't give any benefit. You would even loose energy, because the inserters used for the process require energy too.



Two new technologies are introduced:

Coal processing
- Prerequisite: Flammables.
- Costs: 60 red and green packs @ 15 sec.
- Unlocks compressed coal and energy processor.

Materialization
- Prerequisite: Coal processing, Alien Technology.
- Costs: 100 red, green, blue and purple packs @ 60 sec.
- Unlocks power packs.



Here is an example:

The solar farm powers the 2 energy processors, which create power packs. Note that it has it's own "energy space".

At the injector station, the power packs are put on the belts which feed the power plant. I used a memory circuit to only inject, if there are more than 50 power packs in the chest, and switch to coal if there are none.


In order to install this mod, copy the data folder from the archive into your game folder.


Change Log:

Sounds cool!
Based off your idea, I had another one that could be modded in with the constrains currently here I think.

Machine A. creates fell batteries using empty batteries and power
Machine B. created power using full batteries, and possibly leaves empty batteries as a byproduct

If you make full batteries a type of fuel it should work, not sure you could restrict them so you can't use them in everything though

I thought about something similar, but there are some drawbacks:

Hanse00 wrote: Machine B. created power using full batteries, and possibly leaves empty batteries as a byproduct

They only ways to produce energy are solar panels and boiler/steam-engine atm. It is not possible to create energy and and items at the same time.


My idea was to make the coal / compressed coal workflow cyclic. You could create coal from compressed coal and gain 2 coal by doing so. With this setup following workflow would become possible:

1. Create compressed coal from 1 coal
2. Split it again into 2 coal
3. Use one of them to fuel your plant and the other to repeat at step 1.

Just initial one coal and solar power would be needed to fuel all the boilers you need. Drawback here is, that it would defy physics and create mass from energy. However we are playing a game and i'm totally fine with it if the majority says it's a good idea.

I released version 0.2, which fixes some bugs and adds a processing machine.

Isnt it better to store the coal in a chest, and have less boilers?

ficolas wrote:Isnt it better to store the coal in a chest, and have less boilers?

I'm not exactly sure what you mean. Storing coal in chest doesn't produce any energy, even with scripting it isn't possible to inject energy into the electric network.

To use the compressed coal and the energy pack, you need to place them in a boiler?
So if you dont place coal in a boiler to make compressed coal, you can save it in a chest.
But energy packs can be usefull for solar panels

Yes, it's all about the solar panels. Creating compressed coal / energy packs with steam energy doesn't give any benefit. You would even loose energy, because the inserters used for the process require energy too.

I attached an example to the first post, in order to make it more clear how to use the mod.