Thermal power plant

[Qeeet]

Can we have some kind of thermal power plant or maybe petroleum gas/heavy oil/light oil burner to power turbines?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_power_station

power_plant.png (14.41 KiB) Viewed 6042 times

[Tekillaa]

Hi, it's already in the game, you use can use different oil to make solid fuel (the light oil is the cheapest) then you burn the solid fuel instead of coal in the boiler to make steam then power.

[Qeeet]

Hi, it's already in the game, you use can use different oil to make solid fuel (the light oil is the cheapest) then you burn the solid fuel instead of coal in the boiler to make steam then power.

I consider boiler as a bottom low tier. Also it cannot power turbines. Temperature is 165.

[darkfrei]

The nuclear reactor is literally thermal power plant.

[Qeeet]

Guys, I don't get why you are so defensive towards current 2 tier power generation system. I see this game needs 3 tiers of it.
tier 1 are boilers (which are very pollutive) and steam engines (which are weak)
tier 2 could be some kind of fluid burner (with additional pipe input for oil/heavy oil/petroleum) or maybe even boilers but producing higher temp steam when solid fuel is used which would be enough for turbines to spin
tier 3 are nuclear reactor with turbines

[Qeeet]

using nuclear power is very easy. No effort is needed.
How about making research of nuclear power even more expensive and adding tier 2 power?

[Tekillaa]

Steam is not a good solution for T3 (classic boiler and nuclear reactor) because it use a lot of updates

viewtopic.php?f=204&t=69802 you can see here what happen if we use full steam power in a mega base

In the game its : T1 classic boiler, T2 (or little T3) nuclear then T3 mass solar for updates : Nuclear is T2 because its cheap energy compare to solar panel and accumulator. Yeah i see what you want but i dont see how it can improve the game compare to idea like transform the wood into coal with electric furnaces for example.

[Qeeet]

Steam is not a good solution for T3 (classic boiler and nuclear reactor) because it use a lot of updates

viewtopic.php?f=204&t=69802 you can see here what happen if we use full steam power in a mega base

In the game its : T1 classic boiler, T2 (or little T3) nuclear then T3 mass solar for updates : Nuclear is T2 because its cheap energy compare to solar panel and accumulator. Yeah i see what you want but i dont see how it can improve the game compare to idea like transform the wood into coal with electric furnaces for example.

incredible. That base is insanely large

[Qeeet]

For nuclear reactor to be viable in late game there should be some space science packs upgrades for it.

[bobucles]

But nuclear IS viable for the late game and beyond. You're probably not using it properly.

One of the most important traits of nuclear reactors (which probably isn't explained very well) is that adjacent reactors boost each other. So a 2x2 block of reactors will produce 480MW of power, while a solo reactor only gives 40MW.

[Qeeet]

But nuclear IS viable for the late game and beyond. You're probably not using it properly.

One of the most important traits of nuclear reactors (which probably isn't explained very well) is that adjacent reactors boost each other. So a 2x2 block of reactors will produce 480MW of power, while a solo reactor only gives 40MW.

hey, if your message is addressed to me, I knew that, I use this configuration 2x2.
But still I'd love to see more diversity to power generation.
If we had oil (or better any burnable fluid) power plant I definitely would love to use it on some distant oil pumps in my railworld
It won't hurt anybody

[Chao]

I'd also really like a middle ground power generation. Right now steam vs nuclear are completely separated tech stacks. Building nuclear is a huge learning curve as every component is new, you need to build out complex setups for fuel while also understand heatpipes and heat exchangers and building up production for all of these at once.

Gas/oil burning power generation could bring in heat pipes, heat exchangers and turbines without the need to understand and build nuclear at the same time. It also provides more things to do with fluids which I always want to have more uses for and by providing a higher density/lower polution option presents an interesting choice to a player.

Do I take my new oil setup and push into solid fuel to power my existing setup for an easier transition or take some time to build out oil turbines? If I went for the latter, do I then later build a new nuclear setup or use the existing infrastructure and swap out my heat generation with nuclear?

[Chao]

With the oil changes mentioned a few weeks ago I want to revive this idea.

Having an oil/turbine setup to ease in the step up to nuclear fits with the philosophy behind the level 1 oil change. Plus by making it fuelled specifically by light or heavy oil means there's more reason to chase this upgrade and gives the fluids more to do.

[BlueTemplar]

You can totally use turbines with thermal fossil fuel power plants (aka boilers).
There's just hardly a reason to, as the only thing that they are better at than steam engines when using 165°C steam is that they take half the space (but are much more expensive)...

P.S.: Also there are tons of mods that add things like this : KS_Power, Bob's, Adamo's ...

[Adamo]

P.S.: Also there are tons of mods that add things like this : KS_Power, Bob's, Adamo's ...

And yeah, I agree with BlueTemplar. It's perfectly viable already, and the mods mentioned just add more methods, but there's little fundamental difference to just burning solid fuel. So I definitely recommend playing around with them if you're looking for more. I feel that my Carbon mod brings natural gas usage up to around where your chart has it, if you use the resource heavily. Nuclear in the game is very OP (as it is in real life, honestly), and I think this makes fossil fuels feel weak in comparison... rightly so. But I still use plenty of fossil fuels just because it's what I like to do. There are a few mods (including mine) which let you make heat from fossil fuels to drive heat exchangers->turbines, too, but there's no efficiency gain or anything. The steam engines are fine at least as far as efficient use of fuel is concerned.

[Chao]

You can totally use turbines with thermal fossil fuel power plants (aka boilers).
There's just hardly a reason to, as the only thing that they are better at than steam engines when using 165°C steam is that they take half the space (but are much more expensive)...

P.S.: Also there are tons of mods that add things like this : KS_Power, Bob's, Adamo's ...

The thinking was adding an oil or gas powered boiler that can reach higher temperatures and better energy efficiency for fuel, thus giving a reason to move into turbines and heatpipes before nuclear.

Yes there are mods but this suggestion is specifically in regards to help give smoother learning curves in vanilla to newer players, in line with the thinking behind the changes to basic oil processing. Nuclear unlocks a lot of technologies and complexities at once, that first nuclear plant you ever build is a big learning curve, this gives players a reason to get used to some concepts separately before that step comes up.

[Adamo]

The thinking was adding an oil or gas powered boiler that can reach higher temperatures and better energy efficiency for fuel, thus giving a reason to move into turbines and heatpipes before nuclear.

Just to be clear, there is no efficiency difference between the lower and higher temperatures. It's only a difference in turbine density. If anyone thinks I'm wrong about that, please let me know, but I don't think so. The steam merely stores energy equal to its temperature times its specific_heat value, and any boiler will heat steam to its target_temperature value with the efficiency set on that boiler (100% in vanilla). You would see a loss of efficiency if you tried to run steam through a steam engine that has a higher temperature than the steam engine can handle, so you DO need to use a steam turbine in that case, but that's the only problem I can think of.

[BlueTemplar]

Note that AFAIK steam engines/turbines also in theory support the effectivity keyword. (Thanks Bilka!)

[Adamo]

Note that AFAIK steam engines/turbines also in theory support the effectivity keyword. (Thanks Bilka!)

I can confirm this is true, because I use it in my physics mod. If Bilka is responsible for keeping that in, I want to send him a cake.

[Chao]

The thinking was adding an oil or gas powered boiler that can reach higher temperatures and better energy efficiency for fuel, thus giving a reason to move into turbines and heatpipes before nuclear.

Just to be clear, there is no efficiency difference between the lower and higher temperatures. It's only a difference in turbine density. If anyone thinks I'm wrong about that, please let me know, but I don't think so. The steam merely stores energy equal to its temperature times its specific_heat value, and any boiler will heat steam to its target_temperature value with the efficiency set on that boiler (100% in vanilla). You would see a loss of efficiency if you tried to run steam through a steam engine that has a higher temperature than the steam engine can handle, so you DO need to use a steam turbine in that case, but that's the only problem I can think of.

I wasn't saying that higher temperature steam was more efficient, I was saying add an oil fired boiler that was both higher temperature and more efficient (if current burners of any sort are all 100% efficient and you want to preserve thermodynamics, double all fuel values and give existing burners 50% efficiency.