Factorio Forums

hi everone

im playing with bob's mods and i wanted 2 exchange the coal boiler MK2 with 2 Steam engines to electric boilers with steam turbines...
but honestly im totally confused...

the electric boiler only offers 165 °C but the steam turbines accept temperatures from 500 to 625°C so it runs just at some % of its maximum power...
even using MK3 coal boilers doesnt help because they only offer 305°C
this way, the electric boilers nearly consumes as much energy as the turbines produce...

im obviously missing something.

ps: i tried some heat exchanger but they consume so much power and i couldnt get them to work.

plz help

Greet Mc

turbines are for heat exchangers powered by nuclear reactors.

there is no such thing as an electric boiler in my mod.

Boiler(base game item) to Boiler MK4 is for Steam engine(base game item) to Steam engine MK3.

Heat exchanger(base game item) to heat exchanger MK3 is for Steam turbine(base game item) to Steam turbine MK3.

thx for the answer

yes, my mistake... it was from the "electric furnances" mod

just slipped my attention, but its strange. im sure boiler MK1 could handle 2 steam engines MK1 and B. MK2 could handle 2 SE MK2 some days before...

but after the updates the steam engines arent maximum powered.

could you plz add some electric boilers? with apropriate steam temperature? i dont wanna get 2 much energy out of it, but more than its used to power itself

ps: it doesnt have to be simple, perhaps you need the heat exchangers to get some steam to the correct temperature and get some water in return...

Although the idea of an electric boiler is attractive, I don't want to for one simple reason.

People will start a "Free energy" and "Perpetual motion machine" debate again.

A large part of my mod aims for realism, people have already had huge debates about the possibility of getting more energy out of the steam system than is labelled on a piece of coal. Actually getting more energy out than you put in could be that all over again.

so if you look at it from the other side, an electric boiler that doesn't give out as much electricity as you put in, makes the whole thing kind of pointless.


One of the other things I have been considering though is a burner reactor. As in, the nuclear reactor type entity that generates heat to be used by things like the heat exchanger. I want to try and put together a few other entities powered by heat too, like a furnace.

bobingabout wrote:so if you look at it from the other side, an electric boiler that doesn't give out as much electricity as you put in, makes the whole thing kind of pointless.

There are (at least) two mods that are intended to add exactly that, though. I think the creators made them so they could generate steam for recipes without needing to either bring fuel over or pipe steam over from their power setup - trading energy efficiency for convenience.
Not arguing for you to add one also, just pointing out that there is a use-case for a lossy electric boiler.

bobingabout wrote:One of the other things I have been considering though is a burner reactor. As in, the nuclear reactor type entity that generates heat to be used by things like the heat exchanger. I want to try and put together a few other entities powered by heat too, like a furnace.

Heat powered furnaces? Would make a lot of sense, considering you turn heat (from boilers/nuclearr reactor) into steam, to make electricity, to essentially make heat again inside an electric furnace. Would be more energy efficient too, from a realistic point of view. And jeez, furnaces heated by nuclear fire, how sweet would that be?

unfortunately there are some issues with it though.

Add heat pipes to a furnace. no issue, your furnace has heat pipes and provides power, however, you can't rotate them, the positions are locked.

Add a pipe connection, and when you rotate the pipe connection, the heat pipe location rotates with it.

sounds like a rather odd behaviour. Do the devs know about this? I could imagine they are willing to fix that on their site, if there is now way to achieve it with modding tools.
If everything else fails, I for one could live with an unused pipe connection, if it means we are getting those furnaces it's not pretty that way, but rather un-pretty heat furnaces than no heat furnaces at all

its ok that we get no free energy, so ill go to solar panels sooner or later
as i said i dont want it too easy or small i want huge factories

Xelan wrote:sounds like a rather odd behaviour. Do the devs know about this? I could imagine they are willing to fix that on their site, if there is now way to achieve it with modding tools.
If everything else fails, I for one could live with an unused pipe connection, if it means we are getting those furnaces it's not pretty that way, but rather un-pretty heat furnaces than no heat furnaces at all

I posted a big report about this behaviour a few hours ago.
Before 0.15.12 I think it was, maybe 0.15.13, it didn't rotate at all, the rotation is a "bug fix", but seems like only a partial fix. To be honest I'd rather it be consistent non-rotatable than what it is right now. Either way, I COULD put a heat pipe link in both sides of all corners, then it doesn't matter if you rotate it or not, the points would be consistent.

EDIT: oh look, "Fixed for next release" viewtopic.php?f=30&t=48574

Regarding the steam turbine Mk2 and Mk3 do these work well with regular heat exchangers or is it really only good to match Mk2 with Mk2 and 3 with 3? The Mk2 turbines are available before the Mk2 heat exchangers, so I'm wondering if it's a benefit to use the Mk2 turbines with the vanilla heat exchangers.

Also, are there numbers for ratios? How does one determine the number of turbines you can support with a certain number of heat exchangers? What exactly do the Mk2 and 3 machines do? Are they just for the sake of being compact, or do you actually get more power out of the same reactor than before?

I can't remember the ratios, would need to look it up to be sure but...
From what I remember, the MK2 and MK3 heat pipe boilers will produce hotter steam, a temperature tuned to the MK2 and MK3 turbines.

The MK2 and MK3 turbines will still offer a 10% and 20% efficiency bonus over the MK1 if you continue to use the MK1 boiler though. (Just like the MK2 and MK3 steam engines)

The numbers are all here The formula is Power = water power per degree(0.2kW) * fluid per tick * 60 * (Water Temperature - 15) * effectivity(of the steam engine)

An example run through of the formula is as follows
0.2kW * 0.5 * 60 * 150 * 1 = 900kW (SE1 with B1)
That says that you get 900kW from a MK1 steam engine (when fuelled by a MK1 boiler)
Since we know that the boiler produces 1.8MW of steam, that's 2 engines per boiler.
We need to re-arrange the formula to get engines per boiler.
from what I understand, if the temperature is under the steam engine limit, it just consumes at the standard rate and produces less power. but if the temperature is over, it uses less steam to produce the maximum power, allowing more engines per boiler. This complicates the formula, because you then have 2, 1 for less than or equal temperature, and one for greater than.

Ignore effectivity (For a boiler, it just uses less fuel, for a steam engine it produces more power, it is a bonus factor that doesn't concern us for this calculation)

You then have Generator Power = water power per degree(0.2kW) * fluid per tick * 60 * (Water Temperature - 15)
And generators per boiler would then be Boiler power / Generator power.
0.2*60 = 12 combining power per degree with ticks per second to simplify the maths.
Simplified, the formula becomes:
Boiler power / (12 * Fluid per tick * (Water Temperature - 15))
Which should work for the Boiler Temperature <= Generator temperature (All values in kW, so the 1.8MW on a boiler becomes 1800)

so for MK4 boiler and MK3 steam engine you end up with...
6500 / (12 * 0.75 * (375 - 15)) = 2.006... of effectively 2 steam engines per boiler.
(note: I don't have stats for a MK1 HE, I can't access the game from here to check)

For the case of Boiler temp > Generator temp, I think you'll need to add in an extra step of... * ((Boiler temp -15) / (Generator temp -15)) on the end.

Q: Why -15 on all these temperatures?
A: Water starting temperature is 15 degrees. The "Energy capacity" of water is energy per degree ABOVE starting temperature, so at 15 degrees it has 0 energy stored.

bobingabout wrote:Although the idea of an electric boiler is attractive, I don't want to for one simple reason.

People will start a "Free energy" and "Perpetual motion machine" debate again.

A large part of my mod aims for realism, people have already had huge debates about the possibility of getting more energy out of the steam system than is labelled on a piece of coal. Actually getting more energy out than you put in could be that all over again.

so if you look at it from the other side, an electric boiler that doesn't give out as much electricity as you put in, makes the whole thing kind of pointless.


One of the other things I have been considering though is a burner reactor. As in, the nuclear reactor type entity that generates heat to be used by things like the heat exchanger. I want to try and put together a few other entities powered by heat too, like a furnace.

There would be 2 points to electrical boilers:

1) You can use solar power to generate steam and store it for the night. No accumulators (batteries) required.
2) You might need steam for other things than steam engines but don't want the pollution of burning coal or have no fuel near where you need it.

So I would vote for electrical boilers but they should be inefficient to prevent free energy.

i would make electric boiler a factor of electric chemical processors to create steam at a location without the use of coal for chemical processing. Helps with density.

I have considered adding an electric boiler that heats water to 100 degrees... maybe a little over to make sure it's steam.
The hard part is getting the graphics to look right.

Exasperation wrote:

bobingabout wrote:so if you look at it from the other side, an electric boiler that doesn't give out as much electricity as you put in, makes the whole thing kind of pointless.

There are (at least) two mods that are intended to add exactly that, though. I think the creators made them so they could generate steam for recipes without needing to either bring fuel over or pipe steam over from their power setup - trading energy efficiency for convenience.
Not arguing for you to add one also, just pointing out that there is a use-case for a lossy electric boiler.

Also useful for solar powered setups. It's more efficient to produce steam during the day and store it in tanks than to build accumulators. Even if it weren't a lack of batteries still makes solar powered steam generation an attractive option.

And yes, I too use electric boilers to produce steam for some of Angels recipes.