0.15 - solar panels & accumulators

[Shokubai]

People still use solar?

[Jon8RFC]

Am I the only one who simply installs solar panels and accumulators separately in large amounts, without much regard to proportions?

Because, you know, there's no such thing as too much power. And considering laser turrets, there's no such thing as too much stored power, either.

I definitely prefer this, and yes, I'd rather have ample power. I also like seeing 40k solar panels in my power GUI, knowing that it's precisely 40,000 panels, and not actually something like 40,586 panels (which you can't even know unless you manually count). The same goes for the GJ and accumulators' display numbers. I don't treat power the same as manufacturing, so I'd rather have ample power and not worry about ratios since they're unnecessary with plenty of land available.

[BlakeMW]

People still use solar?

In my latest deathworld game I have 160MW of nuclear generation (no waste), 80MW of coal generation and 30MW of solar all simultaneously, for base needs of ~100MW, spikes to 300MW when lasers turrets are busy. I'd be using pure nuclear but uranium happens to be very scarce on the part of the map I've explored. Both the coal and solar are essentially helping me to conserve uranium.

[WarpZone]

Am I the only one who simply installs solar panels and accumulators separately in large amounts, without much regard to proportions?

Because, you know, there's no such thing as too much power. And considering laser turrets, there's no such thing as too much stored power, either.

I don't think you're the only one. I've seen different pictures representig that building layout you're saying, Actually some of the devs seems to use this
(from link posted here https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-187)

Ah, yes. Good old Crafting Game devs. Always changing the laws of physics on us players so we have to start playing it the way they do every time we solve their interest curve.

[PooPooUndees]

Hope this doesn't count as necro'ing a thread, it's only a month old... anyways this is the solar panel setup I've been using, it has Roboport integration and it has a perfect 20:24 Ratio (Total of 120 Accumulators and 144 Solar Panels) Technically for the optimal 1:0.84 ratio you would need 1 more accumulator in this setup (0.91 of one actually) but there is also a lot of excess space in the Substation area of influence on the edges so you are wasting some space but I like it because it looks nice, has a good ratio and you can tile it with walking space in between each solar array.

[Jap2.0]

I would like to do solar panels and accumulators separately, but I can't bear having wasted space (when using substations and roboports), so I used this solar + accumulator design and replaced the 3x3 areas of accumulators in the top left and bottom right with solar panels, which hopefully made it mostly solar panels. I also have a blueprint of just accumulators.

[Zool]

Well, I kinda disagree about the "perfect ratio" for accumulators - if you have too many accumulators, you simply gain a bit of "headroom" in case you get some bigger biter waves in the night. So in case you have some empty spaces, simply add more accumulators and you are fine.

[mrvn]

After not so long of a fiddling, IMHO this is a fair solution. Without the robo-port integration but two robo-ports in your power armor (one is not enough as shown), you can comfortably walk next to the blueprint and all tiles will be reached.

Replace one accumulator near the edge with a big pole and you can leave walking space for better building of the adjacent ones.

Cheers

SolarFarmFac.png

Oh come on now. This screams for rearanging the accumulators into a smiley face.

[BlakeMW]

Well, I kinda disagree about the "perfect ratio" for accumulators - if you have too many accumulators, you simply gain a bit of "headroom" in case you get some bigger biter waves in the night. So in case you have some empty spaces, simply add more accumulators and you are fine.

I actually go the other way, adding extra solar panels to help ensure the accumulators are fully charged each day, since a large swarm during the day can result in the accumulators not fully charging and problems that night. When taken to extremes excess solar panels are clearly more useful than excess accumulators: 100 Solar Panels and 0 Accumulators will provide 70% power over the course of a day: 0 Solar panels and 84 Accumulators will provide no power. I mainly only build excess accumulators to the extent that extra megawattage is required to cover spikes (this is mainly as an addition to Nuclear reactors though, since with solar/accu you have ridiculous ability to cover spikes). Of course solar panels and accus have very different resource requirements, accus being mainly oil, which can also influence the ratio to use.

[mrvn]

Well, I kinda disagree about the "perfect ratio" for accumulators - if you have too many accumulators, you simply gain a bit of "headroom" in case you get some bigger biter waves in the night. So in case you have some empty spaces, simply add more accumulators and you are fine.

I actually go the other way, adding extra solar panels to help ensure the accumulators are fully charged each day, since a large swarm during the day can result in the accumulators not fully charging and problems that night. When taken to extremes excess solar panels are clearly more useful than excess accumulators: 100 Solar Panels and 0 Accumulators will provide 70% power over the course of a day: 0 Solar panels and 84 Accumulators will provide no power. I mainly only build excess accumulators to the extent that extra megawattage is required to cover spikes (this is mainly as an addition to Nuclear reactors though, since with solar/accu you have ridiculous ability to cover spikes). Of course solar panels and accus have very different resource requirements, accus being mainly oil, which can also influence the ratio to use.

Using steam tanks to cover spikes is actually more efficient than accumulators. So if you go nuclear or keep steam engines that would be better.

[BlakeMW]

Using steam tanks to cover spikes is actually more efficient than accumulators. So if you go nuclear or keep steam engines that would be better.

It's not more iron efficient though, accus are a little cheaper in terms of iron per MW - while the difference is not really enough to matter, as iron is the progress limiting resource it would be wrong to say that making accus slows your progress. The more important thing is I like to clearly differentiate between base load (generation capacity) and spike accommodation. Using accus allows the standard power pole view to do this very well, you can see at a glance how your average power usage compares with generation. I wouldn't necessarily be willing to pay a lot for this convenience, but as previously noted accus are not expensive per MW. They are expensive in terms of power storage capability but I'm paying mainly for megawattage and not storage - enough to provide full power for the few seconds it takes a swarm to evaporate.

[mrvn]

Using steam tanks to cover spikes is actually more efficient than accumulators. So if you go nuclear or keep steam engines that would be better.

It's not more iron efficient though, accus are a little cheaper in terms of iron per MW - while the difference is not really enough to matter, as iron is the progress limiting resource it would be wrong to say that making accus slows your progress. The more important thing is I like to clearly differentiate between base load (generation capacity) and spike accommodation. Using accus allows the standard power pole view to do this very well, you can see at a glance how your average power usage compares with generation. I wouldn't necessarily be willing to pay a lot for this convenience, but as previously noted accus are not expensive per MW. They are expensive in terms of power storage capability but I'm paying mainly for megawattage and not storage - enough to provide full power for the few seconds it takes a swarm to evaporate.

For megawatt you need lots of steam engines / turbines connected to your steam tanks. Steam engines and turbines might be more expensive than accumulators per megawatt if you count iron. Personally I'm usually more concerned with crude oil and there accumulators certainly loose out on every front.

You also need enough storage to cover the night. So unless you go pure solar a mix of steam tanks for storage and accumulators for spikes seems ideal.

[BlakeMW]

For megawatt you need lots of steam engines / turbines connected to your steam tanks. Steam engines and turbines might be more expensive than accumulators per megawatt if you count iron. Personally I'm usually more concerned with crude oil and there accumulators certainly loose out on every front.

I don't see why you'd be concerned about crude oil in 0.15: there is just so much of it. Putting remotely any effort into crude oil stretching (i.e. productivity in oil chain, OR speedjacking - both is overkill) seems to render oil non-progress limiting, i.e. if you mine all the iron, and suck all the crude oil, in a given patch of land, your progress will be limited by the iron rather than the crude oil. That is the default vanilla balance, YMMV if you using non-standard resource settings but that applies to anything.

[mikavelli]

Hey,
I'd like to share my solar layout for 0.15 - not perfect, but "close enough" in tandem (yep, there are 2 blueprints):
I tried making it logistics friendly, since my previous setup:
16 Substations,
299/344 ratio and
3 tiles free at sides giving up to 6 tiles walking space - if you wanted to put railway through
logistics ports built at sides;
had a glaring issue - you had to put those ports manually:


So, new design is more-or-less better(glaring issue is substations get too close to each other when you put segments ar logistics length):
180 solar, 158 accu, 9 substations, 1 port, 0.87 ratio


and 184 solar, 149 accu, 9 substations, 1 port, 0.81 ratio


Used together, they give sustained 15.2MW at 0.84378 ratio, which means there's only 1.24 extra accumulator per duet(which means for each 8 ".81+.87" pairs make one "0.81+.81" pair for 0.84000268 ratio

PS.: i know, nuclear is now a big deal, but solar still looks cooler ;p

PS.:

[mrvn]

Am I the only one who simply installs solar panels and accumulators separately in large amounts, without much regard to proportions?

Because, you know, there's no such thing as too much power. And considering laser turrets, there's no such thing as too much stored power, either.

I also do. There are genuine merits to using the proper ratio but it's not hard to bring the ratio into vaguely proper proportions, like if you have 1000 solar panels you should have 840 accus. I always feel more solar panels is better than more accumulators because failing to fully recharge during the day sucks.

Except with laser turrets it is good to store more energy than you need in a night. So recharging them over multiple days after a big attack is ok.