So, some time ago (waaaay back at the start of 0.15) I started thinking about how I could optimise the space I was using inside my factory areas, especially in light of my build goal in my first .15 world, namely the aim to run a factory on pure solar energy. The main issue I had was simply the amount of space required for all those solar panels and accumulators so I got to thinking where I might be able to 'fill in' unused tiles in an orderly manner so as to reduce the areas required for dedicated solar farms. It occurred to me quite quickly that no matter how compact and efficient my production areas were, I still had massive amounts of empty space all over the place, namely my rail lines.
I've been using a drive on left system with a 6 tile gap between tracks for a long while since it is the most compact arrangement I've found which still allows for effective and easy to build/modify junctions. As such, the sheer amount of empty tiles between tracks created by my rail network accounted for approximately 40% of all the usable empty space inside my main factory area, so I designed a couple of simple blueprints to slot into those gaps, one for a 6:5 ratio of solar to accu (not perfect but fairly close) and one which allows for a walkway between the rails (ratio heavily favours accu but looks pretty)
Solar 6 to 5 inlay
Solar walkway inlay
Now I realise this isn't exactly groundbreaking stuff, but in the testbed world I made for proof of concept I discovered that I could produce a surprisingly large amount of power from this simple setup, coming from space which would otherwise have remained entirely unproductive. A nice little plus to this arrangement is that your power grid will be connected in the same grid as your rail network, meaning if you have rails nearby you always have power too. A friend convinced me to post it up on these forums and I finally did so (albeit a fair time down the road from concept) and so here it is. A simple way of getting more power production out of your factory space, enjoy!
Power generation from wasted rail space
Re: Power generation from wasted rail space
For space inside your factory this is a neat setup (unless you like to drive places with your car - slamming against a solar panel or accu, then getting rearended by a train would be... unfortunate), but outside of a factory wall, this would quickly run into issues with the biters. They can't walk over solar panels, and while they'll usually ignore them, if blocked, they'll destroy them.
Some screenshots would be nice to show it off.
Some screenshots would be nice to show it off.