Page 1 of 1

[0.15] SolarFarm -> perfect ratio + tileable + robo port

Posted: Thu Jun 01, 2017 11:01 am
by Gecko
Hi guys,

after some fiddling I want to show of my design for a Solar Farm for version 0.15.X. Although solar might be out of date because of the recent addition of Nuclear Power to the game, for sure there are some people out there still using solar for remote mining (like me) or early replacement of coal power.
Because of the radius change for the substations, there was a lot of overlap in the previous designs, so I tried to clean it up a little and turns out you can still get the "magic" ratio of 0.84 accumulator to one solar panel.

This Solar Farm is capable of supplying 8 MW of power day and night (actually it's 8.166 MW but it's good to have some safety) to your factory.

My design
  • is tileable
  • has 100% robo port build coverage
  • has 97% space efficiency
  • has a direction (the accumulator sticking out and the big power pole sticking out of the robo port logistics coverage area so you can keep track of the direction you are placing it)
  • is intuitive to align
Have fun with it!
Cheers
Factorio native exchange string
SolarFarmRoboMK2.PNG
SolarFarmRoboMK2.PNG (910.66 KiB) Viewed 6429 times

Re: [0.15] SolarFarm -> perfect ratio + tileable + robo port

Posted: Thu Jun 01, 2017 8:43 pm
by MBas
Hi. Do you have some suggestion (or proof) of your statement of 100% space efficiency? I just wonder why you think that your electricity distribution is the most space efficient :)

Re: [0.15] SolarFarm -> perfect ratio + tileable + robo port

Posted: Thu Jun 01, 2017 9:07 pm
by Koub
With your 14 substations, you could cover 14x18x18=4536 tiles.
Your blueprint contains 196 solar panels (9 tiles) + 165 accus (4 tiles) + 14 substations (4 tiles) + one roboport (9 tiles). Total : 2489 (I purposefully didn't count the big power pole)
You have too many substations for the area you're covering, so this is suboptimal :). 9 substations is all you need.

Re: [0.15] SolarFarm -> perfect ratio + tileable + robo port

Posted: Thu Jun 01, 2017 10:29 pm
by DaveMcW
The traditional way to calculate space efficiency is to ignore anything that is not a solar panel or accumulator.

(196*9 + 165*4) / 2500 = 97% space efficient.

Re: [0.15] SolarFarm -> perfect ratio + tileable + robo port

Posted: Fri Jun 02, 2017 6:31 am
by Gecko
DaveMcW wrote:The traditional way to calculate space efficiency is to ignore anything that is not a solar panel or accumulator.
Fair enough, I will adopt accordingly.

Re: [0.15] SolarFarm -> perfect ratio + tileable + robo port

Posted: Fri Jun 02, 2017 6:48 am
by Gecko
Koub wrote:With your 14 substations, you could cover 14x18x18=4536 tiles.
Your blueprint contains 196 solar panels (9 tiles) + 165 accus (4 tiles) + 14 substations (4 tiles) + one roboport (9 tiles). Total : 2489 (I purposefully didn't count the big power pole)
You have too many substations for the area you're covering, so this is suboptimal :). 9 substations is all you need.
If this is not a troll, here is my explanation: You have to consider the area of the substation which is square and 18 tiles on one side. So the tradeoff is either neglecting the robo port coverage of 50 tiles and designing an area giving you an integer for the division of substation range within the robo port coverage are (without overlap this would be 2 substations = 36 tiles) and having an overlap of robo port coverage.
Or utilizing the range of the robo port (note: a robo port is more expensive than a substation) and accepting overlap of the substations.

The 6x6-tile exchangeable building blocks I proposed here is how I tried to avoid the 'try until it fits' but rather have a meaningful and systematic approach. This did not take into account the substations and their range. You can try yourself! Any improvements are appreciated!


Besides, if you are not counting the power pole then you would have to take following into respect for you calculations! -> 50x50 - 2 4 . because the power pole is part of the 2500 tiles (for visualizing: it's split in two). Also your calculations for the actual coverage area of 14 substations utilized to their full potential is off. Each substation - as you said - covers a 2x2 = 4 tiles area. So the correct calculations for available space then is: (14x18x18) - (14x4) = 4480.

Cheers


EDIT: As I think about it, depending on how you calculate it, the power pole is either counted with zero or 4 tiles (not 2)... if you keep it in the blueprint, it fills the gap on the other side of the blueprint so it is +/- 0, then you may use 50x50. If you purposefully don't count it, than you have to correct this by subtracting the 4 tiles from the overall 50x50 space, else the calculations will be (ever so slightly) off.

btw, how is your sum 2489? if you add up everything besides the power pole, you should get 2496!
EDIT2: I found it. The robo port is 4x4, not 3x3! There is your missing 7 tiles :P