Resource-aware Power Strategy

[zOldBulldog]

There are tons of tutorials and discussions on "how to do" the various types of power, but I have not seen anything on what is the best overall Power Strategy - especially from the perspective of using resources efficiently. I figured I'd collect what I know in one place, post a few questions, and maybe the discussion will lead to a consensus on the "best practice" Power Strategy.

Obviously the best strategy changes from early to late game, but most principles should remain the same.

Most of the initial post is gone, replaced by the following section based on the responses.

EVOLVING BEST PRACTICES CONSENSUS
(Taken from the replies, will change over time until we reach an agreement)

0) When you create the map disable Cliffs. They are a royal pain in their current form when you try to lay down solar arrays and other space-intensive power structures (thanks for mentioning it Deadlock989).

1) Low power alarm.
- As soon as you get the technology.
- Trigger at (tentative value) 30% of accumulators charge.

2) Steam engines, powered by coal.
- Once you have a better option add ability to shut off pumps and only activate when less than (tentative value) 25% of accumulators charge.
- Pros: Available since early game. Can be used later on to consume your excess supply of wood (thanks dood). Can also be used later on with solid fuel or rocket if you have a permanent excess supply of oil (most efficient is to do it from Light oil, can also be done with Petroleum gas but only worth it in the rare cases where you overproduce Petroleum).
- Cons: Significant pollution and coal consumption.

3) Daytime Solar.
- I am no expert on this. At least for now, do your own thinking. I'll update as people say more.
- Fairly early game, before getting oil, batteries and accumulators.
- Useful to lower pollution.
- Probably requires an isolated grid, so that assembly lines you run with it are those that are useful even if they shut down at night. My guess is that much of the production mall can be run this way, producing by day and stashing the output in chests.

3.1) Early Steam + Solar (Thanks mrvn)
- NOTE: This most makes (3) unnecessary. I need to understand it better and try it before I replace (3).
- Helps save coal and reduce pollution.
- Aprox 6 steam engines per boiler to account for solar functioning 2/3 of the day.
- Electric inserters, fed from a dedicated mini-power-network. Perhaps a few solar panels, burner inserter fed boiler, 6 steam engines, only supplies the electric inserters? This can bootstrap the plant if it somehow shuts down.

4) Nuclear.
- Should buffer steam in storage tanks and only add fuel cells when the steam drops below a certain level. (Thanks Serenity)
- Lots of power in a relatively small footprint.
- Pros: Very fuel efficient once fully setup (thanks to all that mentioned it). No pollution. Small footprint (important while still confined by the enemy). Efficient use of player time for the power it produces (thanks Bauer) Decent option for midgame.
- Cons: Long time to setup. Hampers game performance once it gets big enough (gigawatts or terawatt range).
- Good at least until 5GW (Aeternus reports running fine at 20GW).
- Should eventually shift to Solar before reaching the performance issues.

5) Solar with accumulators.
- Setup out of the way, uses a lot of space.
- Have automated production of panels, accumulators, substations, roboports, radars and bots before you start.
- Have a rail branch nearby and stops you move as you progress. You will need them when you must add power generation in a hurry.
- Use a design that includes roboports, radars and if you wish lamps in your layout.
- Rail delivery of materials to local passive provider chests is a good idea (good thoughts Aethernus).
- Best long term solution.
- Pros: infinitely expandable without affecting game performance, no fuel, no pollution. N(thanks dood, Bauer).
- Cons: Time consuming. Initially cost in materials or low numbers of bots can slow you down in the early stages.

Priority of consumption:

Scenario 1 (rely mostly on solar, alarm reminds you to beef up your Solar):
1) Solar/Accumulators.
2) Accumulators charge below 35% turn on Nuclear (see Nuclear section for additional fuel handling info).
3) Accumulators charge below 30% activate alarm ( text and one-time sound).
4) Accumulators charge below 25% activate backup Steam with wood/coal/solid/rocket fuel.

Scenario 2 (rely mostly on Nuclear - main contribution from Aethernus):
1) Solar / Accumulators.
2) Accumulators charge below 50% turn on Nuclear.
3) Accumulators charge below 50% also turn on Steam, using it only to dispose of excess wood.
4) Accumulators charge below 30% activate alarm, something went seriously wrong as you should never reach this level if you are primarily on Nuclear.
5) Accumulators charge below 25% activate backup Steam with wood/coal/solid/rocket fuel if you still have it around.

Interesting power ideas:

- Powering mining outposts: Ship (nuclear-generated) steam by train to run a steam turbine at the outposts is sufficient to run the miners if you want to avoid rail electric poles that could be chewed by biters. (By Hedning1390) Have at least one solar cell to restart the steam loading after a blackout (By mrvn). As an alternative use local solar/accumulator power and efficiency modules. (By Aeternus)


Do you have additions, objections, concerns or ideas to modify the strategy above? If so please post. I hope to keep updating until we reach a consensus.

[dood]

Most efficient in terms of optimization is still solar. No matter how big you go, it'll not effect game performance.

Most interesting is nuclear. Takes a long initial time to enrich uranium but once you got it going, you barely consume any uranium for tons of power on little space.
Large nuclear power plants don't play nice with UPS because of the too many moving parts though.

Steam is good for clearing your storage of wood once you slam nuclear fuel into every train.

[mrvn]

Most efficient in terms of optimization is still solar. No matter how big you go, it'll not effect game performance.

Most interesting is nuclear. Takes a long initial time to enrich uranium but once you got it going, you barely consume any uranium for tons of power on little space.
Large nuclear power plants don't play nice with UPS because of the too many moving parts though.

Steam is good for clearing your storage of wood once you slam nuclear fuel into every train.

And by large nuclear power plants you are talking giga watts or terra watts.


I think you are missing one more option: Solar cells (no accumulators) and steam engines with steam tanks.

Solar cells are easy to fabricate early while accumulators are hard. Place plenty of cells and your power demand is covered during the day. At night you still need steam engines. But since 2/3rds of the time the solar cells supply power a single boiler can produce steam for about 6 steam engines by storing steam in tanks during the day. Cuts the fuel consumption by 2/3rd compared to pure steam power.

[Bauer]

I perfer solar for its UPS friendliness. There is actually no alternative for a mega-base where UPS is your primary enemy. I'm talking 2 digit terra watts here.

However, there is always also a second resource that you need to take into account: Your (player's) time.
This is awesome for nuclear. It's fun setting up a large nuclear power plant. If scalable it can grow with a few clicks (mostly, because the footprint is still tiny compared to a similarily powerful solar plant). Solar, however, is so tedious to set up. Even if your logistics network builds all the sh*t, it's tedious to walk the land, to landfill the water (and worst case: to remove the cliffs) and slam down the blueprints.

PS: Well the obvious solution is bot landfill and recursive blueprints. (and no cliffs, unless some merciful soul makes a mod to clear cliffs with bots)

[Serenity]

Nuclear power plants should have a switch to turn them off when not needed, as they consume fuel even when idle.

The way to handle this is to buffer some of the steam in tanks. And only insert new fuel cells when the steam drops below a certain level

That also handles part of your priority issue. Solar always has top priority. Steam engines and turbines only turn on when solar can't cover the demand. Though accumulators come last, which isn't ideal with solar + accus

[bobucles]

I'm talking 2 digit terra watts here.

You should probably try reaching 2 digit gigawatts first. I don't know of a base that manages to be efficient, get past 100GW and still has UPS.

In my experience there are a few stages to power growth.
- Starting steam. Obvious. This one can pretty comfortably get a player to their first rocket, and scales up to 200MW without much difficulty. By the time you need 400MW or more the coal and pollution demands get a little crazy. But by then your base is advanced enough to try switching to nuclear.

- Early solar. Starting around 20-100MW, Solar panels alone are amazing for reducing pollution and saving precious coal. This is important for surviving death worlds and higher difficulties in general. Solar takes up a heap of real estate, but you can save land by lowering your total energy demand with efficiency modules.

- Full solar. When accumulators show up you can run full solar power all day and all night. On higher difficulties this may be a problem because it takes a lot of combat to clear land for solar power. You probably will have trouble expanding without an efficient base or ultra high tech pushes.

- VERY Early nuclear. By this I mean 1-2 reactors, no Kovarex, no fuel reprocessing(not that it actually helps nuke power). I haven't met players who treat this as a serious option. While it is technically possible to keep a few reactors going without Kovarex, you are paying serious costs in the future by not stockpiling the rare U235 to get Kovarex started. This is the biggest hiccup in setting up nuclear power. IMO it's better to hold on to steam/solar power just a bit longer and skip early nuclear power.

- Kovarex nuclear. Nuke power becomes serious around the 400MW-5GW mark. Once the U235 starts getting cranked out you can print 2x2 reactors like there's no tomorrow. At this stage nuclear power is vastly superior to steam and it's so much easier to set up than an equivalent amount of solar power. You should definitely set up nuke plants to begin stamping down beacon bases in earnest.

- UPS solar. Reaching 5-10GW and beyond is when the UPS drain of Nuclear begins to hurt. All those steam particles and fluid calculations make a serious dent in performance and the giga base has no choice but to trim UPS hogs.

- Nuclear fuel boilers. Hey now. You're a rock star. Get your game on, go play.

[Deadlock989]

PS: Well the obvious solution is bot landfill and recursive blueprints. (and no cliffs, unless some merciful soul makes a mod to clear cliffs with bots)

Not tested personally: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/CliffDeconstruct

Even more obvious solution is not to make a map with cliffs on. Whose idea were they, anyway?

[zOldBulldog]

Excellent input guys. Keep it coming. I'll update the initial post with the evolving consensus as soon as I have a few free minutes.

Even more obvious solution is not to make a map with cliffs on. Whose idea were they, anyway?

I have a hunch there. The devs might have come up with Cliffs with the intent to help defend against the bugs (plus because they can "look" good). They might have achieved it if the cliffs were spaced out, long and were "mostly straight" north/south or east/west with a few breaks in between, leaving plenty of clear area (especially in the initial build zone with no nests) for the player. I suspect the map generator run away on them and created the mess we saw in this version.

I agree with you though, although I created my current map with cliffs... I seriously doubt I'll enable them ever again unless I see posts saying that they fixed that mess.

The other thing that seems wrong is that cliff explosives (or was it their materials, I can't remember) get unlocked fairly late in the research... and you really want them out of the way when you set that first perimeter train.

[zOldBulldog]

I significantly modified the original post to consolidate all the ideas up to this point.

[JimBarracus]

In my current deathworld I use mainly solar with accus and I have a steam/coal setup as backup.
This base is still in the beginning (about to setup yellow science) but I can handle 95% of time with just solar.

I let the accus drop to 10%, then the steam engines kick in.
At the same time I shut down my ore fields and my science production to have a shorter recharge time on coal.
I still need some eff1 modules for the miners. Little investment with a big benefit.
I will soon switch to electric smelting but for that I need to scale up my solar massivly.

[Bauer]

If using Solar, you will need a 1-20-40 waste burning steam setup as well to get rid of all the wood. It is amazing how much wood you receive when preparing a few dozen chunks for solar...

I also burn my old wooden chests, and wooden power poles that my bots bring back from their "lets abolish all the old stuff and lay down some concrete"-mission.

[mrvn]

If using Solar, you will need a 1-20-40 waste burning steam setup as well to get rid of all the wood. It is amazing how much wood you receive when preparing a few dozen chunks for solar...

I also burn my old wooden chests, and wooden power poles that my bots bring back from their "lets abolish all the old stuff and lay down some concrete"-mission.

I actually use almost exclusively wooden chest and warehouses. Only once you get provider chests the wooden chest become obsolete. And wooden power poles are perfectly fine. No reason to switch to far more expensive metal/steel ones. That is as long as you don't need to drive there.

[bobucles]

If using Solar, you will need a 1-20-40 waste burning steam setup as well to get rid of all the wood. It is amazing how much wood you receive when preparing a few dozen chunks for solar...

Eww, gross.

Real factorio engineers set up a gigantic loop of burner inserters to move the wood around until nothing's left.

Edit: Factorio masters set up massive 50 engine trains that do nothing but run in gigantic rail loops burning wood.

[dood]

3) Steam engines, powered by Solar, before accumulators (thanks mrvn)
- Steam is stored in tanks during the day.
- Pros: Cuts consumption and pollution by about 2/3 compared to pure coal.

There is no benefit to storing steam in tanks.
Neither for steam nor for nuclear power.
If you simply wire the water pump shut with an accumulator condition, you will save 50-100% of coal and instead of murdering your UPS with steam tanks for your reactor, use a performance friendly accumulator farm to throttle fuel consumption.

Boiler steam tanks are basically you irreversibly putting your coal into a buffer in which it then sits. Might as well have it sit on a belt.
Nuclear steam tanks are accumulators. Accumulators do accumulators better than tanks.

Steam tanks will continue to serve no function until we get means to boil water using electricity, at which point you get UPS-unfriendly ghetto-accumulators that you can discard early-mid game.

[zOldBulldog]

3) Steam engines, powered by Solar, before accumulators (thanks mrvn)
- Steam is stored in tanks during the day.
- Pros: Cuts consumption and pollution by about 2/3 compared to pure coal.

There is no benefit to storing steam in tanks.
Neither for steam nor for nuclear power.
If you simply wire the water pump shut with an accumulator condition, you will save 50-100% of coal and instead of murdering your UPS with steam tanks for your reactor, use a performance friendly accumulator farm to throttle fuel consumption.

Boiler steam tanks are basically you irreversibly putting your coal into a buffer in which it then sits. Might as well have it sit on a belt.
Nuclear steam tanks are accumulators. Accumulators do accumulators better than tanks.

Steam tanks will continue to serve no function until we get means to boil water using electricity, at which point you get UPS-unfriendly ghetto-accumulators that you can discard early-mid game.

This is based on mrvn's post. I have not tried it yet.

He suggested using solar panels to generate steam for electricity and store the steam for most of your nightly energy need, with the remainder handled by coal... as an early strategy before you get oil and accumulators.

Lowers coal consumption and reduces pollution. That makes a lot of sense, even if you later upgrade to accumulators. And the old plant would likely stay around until you needed the space.

[dood]

This is based on mrvn's post. I have not tried it yet.

He suggested using solar panels to generate steam for electricity and store the steam for most of your nightly energy need, with the remainder handled by coal... as an early strategy before you get oil and accumulators.

Lowers coal consumption and reduces pollution. That makes a lot of sense, even if you later upgrade to accumulators. And the old plant would likely stay around until you needed the space.

Like I said, there is no way of turning electricity into steam so you can't "use solar panels to generate steam".
All you could hope to do is build more steam engines than your boilers can support and fuel them with steam tanks.
The whole apperatus springs to life at night but all that achieves is spreading fuel consumption and pollution out over the day, you are not in fact reducing it.

Simply building solar panels would have the same effect.

[zOldBulldog]

This is based on mrvn's post. I have not tried it yet.

He suggested using solar panels to generate steam for electricity and store the steam for most of your nightly energy need, with the remainder handled by coal... as an early strategy before you get oil and accumulators.

Lowers coal consumption and reduces pollution. That makes a lot of sense, even if you later upgrade to accumulators. And the old plant would likely stay around until you needed the space.

Like I said, there is no way of turning electricity into steam so you can't "use solar panels to generate steam".
All you could hope to do is build more steam engines than your boilers can support and fuel them with steam tanks.
The whole apperatus springs to life at night but all that achieves is spreading fuel consumption and pollution out over the day, you are not in fact reducing it.

Simply building solar panels would have the same effect.

Then I must ask... what did mrvn mean in his post if he is not saying that there is a way to generate steam from solar?

[dog80]

i ended up using a switch in the refinery so that when the coal input to my boilers gets too low, the oil is used in solid fuel producion instead of gas, to prevent the first out of coal blackout. And without gas your production is kind of limited due to lack of plastic etc...

[dog80]

This is based on mrvn's post. I have not tried it yet.

He suggested using solar panels to generate steam for electricity and store the steam for most of your nightly energy need, with the remainder handled by coal... as an early strategy before you get oil and accumulators.

Lowers coal consumption and reduces pollution. That makes a lot of sense, even if you later upgrade to accumulators. And the old plant would likely stay around until you needed the space.

Like I said, there is no way of turning electricity into steam so you can't "use solar panels to generate steam".
All you could hope to do is build more steam engines than your boilers can support and fuel them with steam tanks.
The whole apperatus springs to life at night but all that achieves is spreading fuel consumption and pollution out over the day, you are not in fact reducing it.

Simply building solar panels would have the same effect.

Then I must ask... what did mrvn mean in his post if he is not saying that there is a way to generate steam from solar?

its only that solar energy is prioritiesed before boiler energy.

[dood]

This is based on mrvn's post. I have not tried it yet.

He suggested using solar panels to generate steam for electricity and store the steam for most of your nightly energy need, with the remainder handled by coal... as an early strategy before you get oil and accumulators.

Lowers coal consumption and reduces pollution. That makes a lot of sense, even if you later upgrade to accumulators. And the old plant would likely stay around until you needed the space.

Like I said, there is no way of turning electricity into steam so you can't "use solar panels to generate steam".
All you could hope to do is build more steam engines than your boilers can support and fuel them with steam tanks.
The whole apperatus springs to life at night but all that achieves is spreading fuel consumption and pollution out over the day, you are not in fact reducing it.

Simply building solar panels would have the same effect.

Then I must ask... what did mrvn mean in his post if he is not saying that there is a way to generate steam from solar?

It's the thing I just said, more steam engines than the boilers can handle and a steam tank buffer to spread out fuel consumption.
That whole "generate steam from solar" was your interpretation, you might want to re-read their post.