[Request] ELECTRIC BOILER

[firebreaker2262]

I'm not sure if it's been made our not, though I haven't seen it yet but cam someone make a mod with an electric boiler? Could make it a Torrey 3 science research item or tier two that can replace coal powered boilers and allow the pollutant conciencious (spelling? ) among us to remove a strong source of pollution.

[Dariel92]

RU: Насколько я понял ты хочешь электрический бойлер для парогенераторов, а такой уже есть. В этом моде он есть https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... t=AlphaMod
EN: As I understand it you want electric boiler for steam generators and such are already there. In this fashion he is https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... t=AlphaMod

[firebreaker2262]

RU: Насколько я понял ты хочешь электрический бойлер для парогенераторов, а такой уже есть. В этом моде он есть https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... t=AlphaMod
EN: As I understand it you want electric boiler for steam generators and such are already there. In this fashion he is https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... t=AlphaMod

Thank you This is what i was looking for

[Evilness]

So do you want to make a perpetum mobile or just havent thought this through? You use coal to make electricity.

[starholme]

So do you want to make a perpetum mobile or just havent thought this through? You use coal to make electricity.

There is tricks like using the electric boiler to heat water for overnight storage, instead of accumulators. A storage tank at 100c has great energy density compared to accumulators. I'm sure that there is other reasons to use an electric boiler as well.

[ssilk]

I linked this thread to suggestions.

And I add a twist with this: This feature makes only sense, if the resulting heated water cannot be used by normal steam engines.

I want to introduce real steam (currently it is just heated water). This introduces a second way (and even more effective) of storing energy on water basis (water -> steam). I hope, this introduces some clever ways to handle energy storing, because it is my opinion, that this part of the game is a way underestimated. I think, that we should have entities, which needs a gigantic energy in peaks and this could be part of handling it.

[bobingabout]

you use steam (hot water) to make electricity, you use electricity to heat water. the process is very lossy to a point of being pointless... the only reason would be if you gained power from this process, which is unrealistic.

Though I think the idea of the sugestion is that during the day when you're running on solar, you heat up water with your electric boilers, and use it at night. I just can't think of a system where this would work without ending up with tanks filled with cold water by the end of the night.

[ssilk]

Yes, it should be not very efficient. But I also thought to
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=6&t=7505 Solar boilers

I see the future of electric energy production in Factorio in diversification: The more different types of energy you use, the more sure it is, that you have always enough.

Think to this situation: Nuclear power plant. But you cannot just turn the nuclear power on/off like steam. It takes a whil to reach it's maximum.
An much more important: It takes a while to be turned off again.

After you turn it off it takes a minute or two to produce no more energy. But where should I put all that energy into? And what happens, if I don't cool it enough? Where to use the hot water? And so on.

This could be part of that idea.

[bobucles]

An electric boiler is DANGEROUS. Why? Because boilers PRODUCE electricity. They should not consume electricity to make electricity. Then you just have an infinite energy sink.

Why would you want an electric boiler? The only possible use is to cook excess solar power and store it in a steam tank. This can be addressed in one of three ways:
- build a steam emergency backup system. There are some guides, but Tl;DR you have a belt loop that constantly keeps coal away from a steam engine until a brownout fails to keep the coal away.
- mod a stronger accumulator or simply build more to get the energy storage you desire.
- mod in a solar powered boiler instead.

[Takezu]

An electric boiler is DANGEROUS. Why? Because boilers PRODUCE electricity. They should not consume electricity to make electricity. Then you just have an infinite energy sink.

Boilers dont produce Electricity they produce heat. You're mixing up Boilers and Engines. Engines change heatenergie to electricalenergie, boilers change fuelenergie to heatenergie. Electricalboilers woulden't they would be useful, the would need the same amount of energie input that they would output.

Energie dosen't pop up out of nowhere, it must come from some source. It's the law of energy conservation, the only thing that your boiler would be doing would be consuming all the energie that your engine would output to heat the water that the engine needs. It's a loop, no gain, in reality it would be a loss.

And if you would use solar it wouldn't be any different, you'd need more power then you would gain, based on efficency and all. Even in a perfekt system it would only be
even in in and output.

[omega_haxors]

I like the idea for this for advanced power storage, say if you want to store a whole bunch of power for later without accumulators, but don't want to ever use polluting coal or fuel. If your goal is to avoid pollution entirely, the loss would be completely invisible. The point is to store electricity completely cleanly, at any cost.

Think about it, if you want to avoid pollution, it makes a lot of sense to heat up a tank of water with solar and then siphon off of it when you need to. Low charge rate but high throughput, great for power surges.

Why not just use accumulators? Well for one they have a lot lower of a throughput and for second the battery production to make them is quite polluting.

Honestly, though, if this was added it would also have to be added with a power switch of sorts, or a tertiary-priority turbine, or else you might find it pretty hard to avoid massive losses by feeding your own network off these.

[bobucles]

Boilers dont produce Electricity they produce heat. You're mixing up Boilers and Engines. Engines change heatenergie to electricalenergie, boilers change fuelenergie to heatenergie. Electricalboilers woulden't they would be useful, the would need the same amount of energie input that they would output.

Your point being? The only reason boilers exist in factorio is to produce electricity. The middle step of water does not change that. My point still stands.

The problem with an electric boiler is that it REQUESTS electricity from the grid. Well. The grid produces electricity from BOILERS. There is an infinite loop where boilers are demanding the very same energy they produce! In short electric boilers are pointless and there are FAR better ways of achieving the same end goal.

[Koub]

Nobody said There should not be loss between the energy obtained via the heat produced by the boilers, and the energy needed for the boilers to heat the water.
Even in real life, you could build such a design : electric boilers exist, you can heat water with them. With that heated water, you can produce electricity with a steam engine. and you can use this electricity to power the aforementioned boilers. The only thing is that you will never get as much power as you have used fisrst place.
And if it is implemented in Factorio, we could use it with other power source like solar (during day).

[Takezu]

Boilers do nothing more then changing chemichal energie in thermical. True ther maybe no use other then pumping the water into the steamengin atm, but thats not the point. Ther maybe other uses, and the conversion step isn't nearly as irrelevant as you want to tell here.

Also ther CAN'T be an infinite loop, only if the system where to be perfect, which is utopia. The boiler would never output the same amount of energie as it consumes, there is alway a thechnical loss. Also ther is a loss in the conversion in the engine. You'll end up with less then you produce. Which i btw also stated.

There is no perfect system that would feed itself to eternity, you lose heat to the environment right in the first step.

[Flextt]

I think the request is both unreasonable and pretty "gamey".

Why is it unreasonable?
The only real appliance for such a concept is to provide base-line hot water in an already running process. So to provide for contingencies like biter attacks and player mistakes, you would still need to keep up a rig of vanilla boilers and burner inserters, that is capable of at least dealing with your grid's stationary drain + supply your electric boilers. That is why steam engine setups are being used anyway.
So the only remaining reason would be a "pop down and forget"-solution which we are already have with solar panels.

Why is it gamey?
Steam production through electricity is not being used in real-life because 1. most electricity is produced through steam, so your electricity -> steam efficiency (50% in Factorio, which is close enough to the real efficiency of coal power plants) must be multiplied with the efficiency of steam -> electricity. Which means only a fraction of your produced energy is actually providing more energy. 2. In a thermodynamic sense, electricity can easily be converted into work

What would be a more complex and engaging alternative? Heat integration! Use heat produced by your oil processing in Chemical Plants and Oil Refinerys to pre-heat your boiler feed water. Piping networks to supply steam throughout a factory are a real thing.

[bobucles]

Also ther CAN'T be an infinite loop, only if the system where to be perfect, which is utopia.

Yes. That is exactly my point. The instant an electric boiler is turned on, it immediately becomes an energy sink as it draws LOTS of power to make LESS power. That's why electric boilers are not used for power plants! They only exist on the consumer end as a convenient way to cook stuff, I.E. the electric furnace that already exists.

The only gameplay reason to have an electric boiler in factorio is to subvert the use of accumulators by turning solar energy into hot water energy. This can be accomplished with a simple solar boiler mod. OR, you can build a steam backup grid as players have already done, and just accept that burning 100 coal out of your 50K mine to survive an emergency is not a big deal.

Heat integration! Use heat produced by your oil processing in Chemical Plants and Oil Refinerys to pre-heat your boiler feed water. Piping networks to supply steam throughout a factory are a real thing.

This might be pretty cool. The issue is that kind of heat already comes from cooking something, whether it be petrol or coal or lots of electricity. Due to existing mechanics, the structure would stall if the hot water was not removed. If efficiency modules are used then the player might be able to exploit more energy out of the production than it costs, which is always a threat with these things.

Perhaps it may be better to think of a different source of hot water? The most obvious solution we use today is geothermal tapping. This might be OP if players could spam free infinite 24/7 power with massive energy storage anywhere they please, but if there were geothermal water boiler points you could definitely make use of them, and eventually cut out coal entirely. This is SORT OF possible using tapped oil wells as a source of energy (up to 1.8MW according to sources), so I dunno if the extra redundancy really matters. Solid fuel is easy enough to stock up on, after all.

[ssilk]

I've made a new suggestion out of this: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =6&t=13023

[dgnuff]

TL;DR The second law of thermodynamics would like a word with you.

[ssilk]

Useless reply to out-of-date thread.

[Gertibrumm]

Useless reply to another useless reply