[MOD 0.12.x] Electric boiler

[johanwanderer]

Type: Mod
Name: Long's Electric Boiler
Description: Eletric boiler to store extra solar power as steam
License: http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT
Version: 0.12.3
Release: 17-Jul-2015
Tested-With-Factorio-Version: 0.12.0
Category: SimpleExtension
Tags: Energy
Website: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... hp?t=13381
Download-Url:

LongElectricBoiler_0.12.11.zip

LongElectricBoiler_0.11.3.zip

*Note: Please download version 0.12.11 for Factorio 0.12.11 and later, 0.12.3 for Factorio 0.12.x, and 0.11.3 for Factorio 0.11.x
*Note: The energy priority seems a bit out-of-whack right now, so this mod isn't all that useful.

License

License
The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2015 Long Doan

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
THE SOFTWARE.


http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT

Long description

Long description
I know of at least one mod that contains an electric boiler:

• Alpha Mod (https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =87&t=7260)
• Steam Cycle Framework (https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =32&t=7859)

But they are much more involved mods.

What this mod is

• A ternary-powered electric boiler -- only run when solar power is available.
• Allows the user to store excess energy in hot water tanks instead of accumulator.

Pictures

Pictures

screenshot-1.png

More screenshots: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 381#p90191

Version history

Version history
- Version 0.11.1: Initial version based on regular pump/boiler.

- Version 0.11.2: Simplify everything. Remove pumping code since the entity is already a pump.

- Version 0.11.3: Fix a nasty bug because we incorrectly use table.remove()

Full changelog: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 381#p90192 (and in changelog.txt within the mod itself).

TODO

• Balancing. Right now the mod is more of a proof-of-concept. I will need to play with it to get the efficiency right.
• ???

Previous Releases

• LongElectricBoiler_0.12.3.zip
• LongElectricBoiler_0.11.2.zip
• LongElectricBoiler_0.11.1.zip

[johanwanderer]

Screenshots...
Note: 1 tank seems to be able to supply about 5 steam engines through the night, so the 4-tanks setup below should be able to handle the full 2 sets of 10 steam engines (20 total).

20150716-02-heating.png

20150716-01-electric-boiler.png

Here you can see the factory being run at night (mostly) from solar energy stored as hot water. It is currently running 200 steam engines (300 electric boilers) producing a bit over 100 MW at night. At dawn, you can see the accumulators kicking in just for a moment. The gradual changes in the graph are due to me adding additional sets of boilers / engines to prevent the accumulators from firing. Also, there are an extra 80 steam engines that are not running (I use them to burn off excess wood and coal) so the 280 is slightly misleading.

Please note that the numbers here are averages. The 5s numbers are much higher for both categories. Obviously this still needs tweaking, because the boilers are no where near the 90% efficiency I wanted.

20150716-01-electric-boiler.png

[johanwanderer]

Change log:
===========
- Version 0.11.1: Initial version based on regular pump/boiler.

- Version 0.11.2: Simplify everything. Remove pumping code since the entity is already a pump.

- Version 0.11.3: Fix a nasty bug because we incorrectly use table.remove()

[kiba]

License?

[johanwanderer]

License?

MIT. lisence.txt is inside the mod itself.

[kiba]

Added your mod to wiki page. https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... _made_mods

[johanwanderer]

Added your mod to wiki page. https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... _made_mods

Thank you very much!

[geech6]

Can you explain what this mod does? I've been playing around with it and I thought it was a boiler (possibly with an accumulator built in?) that runs on electricity when your solar power can't keep up, but my electric boilers keep flickering on and off and won't heat up water.

I'm not sure if it's bug or not, but when I hook up a tank to one of the electric boilers the water doesn't increase in the tank.

I think I'm just doing something wrong and don't understand how this mod works properly.


Edit: I think I got it, you need to have enough solar power to handle everything before your boilers will get power... I think? I think I'm still missing something.

[johanwanderer]

Can you explain what this mod does? I've been playing around with it and I thought it was a boiler (possibly with an accumulator built in?) that runs on electricity when your solar power can't keep up, but my electric boilers keep flickering on and off and won't heat up water.

I'm not sure if it's bug or not, but when I hook up a tank to one of the electric boilers the water doesn't increase in the tank.

I think I'm just doing something wrong and don't understand how this mod works properly.


Edit: I think I got it, you need to have enough solar power to handle everything before your boilers will get power... I think? I think I'm still missing something.

I'm still working on it, but the gist is that it takes a lot of electric power to heat water. In my test, 4 boilers managed to heat the water up to 70 Celsius or so, but when the steam engine starts running, the boilers couldn't keep up.

There are no accumulators in the boiler. It's supposed to work like this:

Code: Select all

power grid ->  electric boilers -> hot water storage -> steam engine -> power grid

1. During the day, the boilers use the grid electricity to heat water, which is stored in the hot water storage (steam engines are not running because solar power is primary)
2. At night, or when solar power is insufficient, the steam engines will draw from the hot water to add electricity to the grid.

Basically, the whole setup allows you to convert your pre-solar power generation into a giant pollution-free accumulator. But I still have to tweak the water heating code a bit before that is practical.

[Alekthefirst]

so if i get it right, this can be used to replace accumulators?

[johanwanderer]

so if i get it right, this can be used to replace accumulators?

Yes, it can, but I haven't played enough with it to see how it work out in large scale. In my current game, I have something like 30 GJ stored in accumulators. It'll take a while for me to remove them all Actually, I plan to just add enough electric boilers to never have to drain the accumulators, which shouldn't be too hard.

[johanwanderer]

Uploaded version 0.11.2 last night: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... hp?t=13381

More screenshots: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 381#p90191
Changelog: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 381#p90192 (and in changelog.txt within the mod itself).

[GotLag]

Can you please clarify something for me? I'm having trouble working out from your screenshots if the steam engines end up powering the boilers (even if they're at a lower priority than everything else), or do they not power them at all, in which case how is this achieved? Seems like the engines should waste a lot of energy attempting to be a perpetual motion machine.

[Alekthefirst]

Can you please clarify something for me? I'm having trouble working out from your screenshots if the steam engines end up powering the boilers (even if they're at a lower priority than everything else), or do they not power them at all, in which case how is this achieved? Seems like the engines should waste a lot of energy attempting to be a perpetual motion machine.

If i understand correctly, then the electric boilers will only ever draw power from the surplus of solar panels

[johanwanderer]

Can you please clarify something for me? I'm having trouble working out from your screenshots if the steam engines end up powering the boilers (even if they're at a lower priority than everything else), or do they not power them at all, in which case how is this achieved? Seems like the engines should waste a lot of energy attempting to be a perpetual motion machine.

If i understand correctly, then the electric boilers will only ever draw power from the surplus of solar panels

That is correct, because the boiler have the lowest priority, they will only run when the steam engines have cut off. In reality, there is a brief period at each end of the cycle where both boilers and steam engines do run, wasting energy.

I uploaded a new screenshot to the second post:


Here you can see the factory being run at night (mostly) from solar energy stored as hot water. It is currently running 200 steam engines (300 electric boilers) producing a bit over 100 MW at night. At dawn, you can see the accumulators kicking in just for a moment. The gradual changes in the graph are due to me adding additional sets of boilers / engines to prevent the accumulators from firing. Also, there are an extra 80 steam engines that are not running (I use them to burn off excess wood and coal) so the 280 is slightly misleading.

Please note that the numbers here are averages. The 5s numbers are much higher for both categories. Obviously this still needs tweaking, because the boilers are no where near the 90% efficiency I wanted.

[johanwanderer]

Uploaded version 0.11.3: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... hp?t=13381

- Version 0.11.3: Fix a nasty bug because we incorrectly use table.remove()

[johanwanderer]

Uploaded version 0.12.3 for Factorio 0.12. Please continue to use version 0.11.3 for Factorio 0.11.x.
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... hp?t=13381

[Koub]

[Moved to Mods for 0.12 ‹ New Items, Entities, Extensions (0.12) by Koub]

[Vuk Farkas]

Idk why but your boilers seem to chaotically raise and lower temperature of water that's in them and that passed them (including the ones in pipes and generators) now in ideal conditions i can use a storage tank to balance it out to 95 degrees, but then my generators dont run on maxium when needed. Is there a way ya could stabilise the temperature to be as stable like in the burner boilers? or do i need to route all water into a storage tank first, then let it throu a burner boiler to raise the temp to max and stable; was that intended? or do a mixed combo of el. boiler+tank+el. boiler+tank?

[johanwanderer]

Idk why but your boilers seem to chaotically raise and lower temperature of water that's in them and that passed them (including the ones in pipes and generators) now in ideal conditions i can use a storage tank to balance it out to 95 degrees, but then my generators dont run on maxium when needed. Is there a way ya could stabilise the temperature to be as stable like in the burner boilers? or do i need to route all water into a storage tank first, then let it throu a burner boiler to raise the temp to max and stable; was that intended? or do a mixed combo of el. boiler+tank+el. boiler+tank?

There was a change somewhere when Factorio was upgraded, and it changes the way the electrical priorities work. I'm not sure if I can keep the electric boilers working without doing more work to separate the two grids.