My little factory

[ronnie124]

Hi factorians. I was kinda low on power, so I build this coal and steam Power station Total 780 steam engines. And yes I am plaing with Landfill, RSO and few other mods.

[MadZuri]

I did some math earlier, and it turns out that if you are taking from a box burner inserters use less total energy than other inserters with the added bonus of avoiding the power death spiral. Fueled burner inserters became part of vanilla recently, and they are cheap, so there really is no reason to use anything other than burner inserters in that design. Also: burner inserters produce no pollution, while electric inserters do (indirectly).

[Zhab]

Also... the insertion of coal into boilers doesn't need to be fast now does it ?

[DaveMcW]

I did some math earlier, and it turns out that if you are taking from a box burner inserters use less total energy than other inserters with the added bonus of avoiding the power death spiral.

The roboports still have a power death spiral problem.

Also: burner inserters produce no pollution, while electric inserters do (indirectly).

Have you factored in the pollution cost of mining coal?

[MadZuri]

The roboports still have a power death spiral problem.

True, but they have a rather large internal charge, and high priority on power to recharge.

Have you factored in the pollution cost of mining coal?

No, I considered it "negligible" but feel free to calculate the pollution of miners to keep those burner inserters running (don't forget to include their stack bonus when pulling from a box so they only operate at exactly a rate of 1.17/minute if the boiler it is feeding is going full blast).

[SuperObeseNinja]

this appears to be a nice small power station
compact able to fit in any factory thumbs up

[azurelinctus]

I did some math earlier, and it turns out that if you are taking from a box burner inserters use less total energy than other inserters with the added bonus of avoiding the power death spiral.

The roboports still have a power death spiral problem.

Also: burner inserters produce no pollution, while electric inserters do (indirectly).

Have you factored in the pollution cost of mining coal?

The coal has to be mined for electric inserters to run so there is pollution from running the boilers for the electricity to run the inserter and the miner wheras the burner inserter creates pollution indirectally through just the running of the miner to fuel it. There is still more pollution created and more rescouces drained for using electric inserters for no gain as boilers don't consume coal faster than a burner inserter fills it.

[bobucles]

Has anyone run the math on burner vs. electric inserter? Burner inserters seem to be INCREDIBLY wasteful with their energy consumption, but they don't seem to consume idle power. Electric inserters always consume a shot of idle power, but individual actions are pretty cheap.

I suppose if someone was clever, they could attempt a timing system to only keep electric inserters powered a fraction of the time. That would dramatically reduce the idle load, which translates into savings.

[PiggyWhiskey]

Has anyone run the math on burner vs. electric inserter? Burner inserters seem to be INCREDIBLY wasteful with their energy consumption, but they don't seem to consume idle power. Electric inserters always consume a shot of idle power, but individual actions are pretty cheap.

I suppose if someone was clever, they could attempt a timing system to only keep electric inserters powered a fraction of the time. That would dramatically reduce the idle load, which translates into savings.

Jumped into a sandbox game.
1 Piece of coal can move a burner insterter 60 times (chest to chest)
And with 1x boiler 1x steam engine the normal inserter could move 535 times.

This didn't sound right so I jumped into the data files for the details.

Electric Inserter: (entities.lua)
energy_per_movement = 5000,
energy_per_rotation = 5000

Burner Inserter (demo-entities.lua)
energy_per_movement = 100000
energy_per_rotation = 100000

Boiler (demo-entites.lua)
effectivity = 0.5 (burner)

Which adds up close enough.
The boiler converts coal to energy at 50% compared to burner inserters (and furnaces)
However the burner inserter needs more energy for the movements.

If I wanted to I could probably analyse the data and give you an exact % more efficient, but I'm feeling lazy.

If you're using inserters, use electric. (Maybe even for your emergency power supply depending on how often it kicks in etc)
For furnaces, Steel furnaces are the way to go unless you want modules.

[MeduSalem]

@ronnie124:

When you are using Landfill already to achieve better access to the water for the pumps, you might as well go for 28:20 = Boiler:Steam Engine setups, so you are using the available space for the pumps better. Of course you will need 2 pumps per Boiler/Steam Engine row then, one won't suffice in that case.

Jumped into a sandbox game.
1 Piece of coal can move a burner insterter 60 times (chest to chest)
And with 1x boiler 1x steam engine the normal inserter could move 535 times.

This didn't sound right so I jumped into the data files for the details.

Electric Inserter: (entities.lua)
energy_per_movement = 5000,
energy_per_rotation = 5000

Burner Inserter (demo-entities.lua)
energy_per_movement = 100000
energy_per_rotation = 100000

Boiler (demo-entites.lua)
effectivity = 0.5 (burner)

Which adds up close enough.
The boiler converts coal to energy at 50% compared to burner inserters (and furnaces)
However the burner inserter needs more energy for the movements.

If I wanted to I could probably analyse the data and give you an exact % more efficient, but I'm feeling lazy.

If you're using inserters, use electric. (Maybe even for your emergency power supply depending on how often it kicks in etc)
For furnaces, Steel furnaces are the way to go unless you want modules.

Which is not entirely correct.

You forget that electric Inserters draw idle power, the Burner Inserters do not.

So in applications where the inserter has to move permanently the electric inserters may be in advantage, of course.

But in applications where the Inserter only has to move every once in a while, the Burner Inserters might still win over the electric ones because of how the summed up idle power draw will eventually become greater than what the more inefficient burner inserters need for their movement.

For a correct scenario you will have to measure a regular electric Inserter directly against a Burner Inserter, which I did once a while ago, but I haven't done any math, just empirical observation, using following setup:

1 Chest filled with 10 Fuel Units, 1 Boiler, 1 Steam Engine, and some Radars.

First I used a regular eletric Inserter to feed the Boiler from the Chest, measured the time with a stopwatch until all 10 Fuel Units where gone. The Inserter was powered by the same Steam Engine.

Then I did the same with the Burner Inserter, and the Burner Inserter was able to go longer than the Electric one.

Thereby I conclude that the idle power draw of the electric Inserter is in the long term much worse than the energy consumption of a Burner Inserter, and it will get worse the more Inserters you are using to feed the Boilers. The less energy you draw from the Steam Engines, the more wasteful the electric Inserters get and the better the Burner Inserters perform because of how they don't use any energy as long as they idle.

It also highly depends on which Fuel is used to feed the boilers/inserters. With Solid Fuel the advantage of Burner Inserters becomes even more clear, because they will take even less units of Fuel for themselves.

I guess that someone can do some perfect math about it, but I'm more the empirical type of player, and I say that using Burner Inserters in cases where the Inserter doesn't have to move permanently the Burner Inserters are way better in their Energy Consumption and are thereby a valid strategy/approach.

[PiggyWhiskey]

snip

Which is not entirely correct.
You forget that electric Inserters draw idle power, the Burner Inserters do not.
So in applications where the inserter has to move permanently the electric inserters may be in advantage, of course.
But in applications where the Inserter only has to move every once in a while, the Burner Inserters might still win over the electric ones because of how the summed up idle power draw will eventually become greater than what the more inefficient burner inserters need for their movement.
For a correct scenario you will have to measure a regular electric Inserter directly against a Burner Inserter, which I did once a while ago, but I haven't done any math, just empirical observation, using following setup:
1 Chest filled with 10 Fuel Units, 1 Boiler, 1 Steam Engine, and some Radars.
First I used a regular eletric Inserter to feed the Boiler from the Chest, measured the time with a stopwatch until all 10 Fuel Units where gone. The Inserter was powered by the same Steam Engine.
Then I did the same with the Burner Inserter, and the Burner Inserter was able to go longer than the Electric one.
Thereby I conclude that the idle power draw of the electric Inserter is in the long term much worse than the energy consumption of a Burner Inserter, and it will get worse the more Inserters you are using to feed the Boilers. The less energy you draw from the Steam Engines, the more wasteful the electric Inserters get and the better the Burner Inserters perform because of how they don't use any energy as long as they idle.
It also highly depends on which Fuel is used to feed the boilers/inserters. With Solid Fuel the advantage of Burner Inserters becomes even more clear, because they will take even less units of Fuel for themselves.
I guess that someone can do some perfect math about it, but I'm more the empirical type of player, and I say that using Burner Inserters in cases where the Inserter doesn't have to move permanently the Burner Inserters are way better in their Energy Consumption and are thereby a valid strategy/approach.[/quote]

I would have done further in depth including the passive draw, but ignored that because if its for back up power systems, then the subnetworks can be powered down.

It all boils down to how much fuel your boilers are burning,
if your steam engines are running full power, then electric would be better as you would be burning more fuel, less passive time.
If they're running pretty low, then burners

[GopherAtl]

I came at this from a different way.

I set up an offshore pump to a single boiler to a single steam engine, hooked that to a single accumulator, and manually fed the boiler 1 piece of coal.

Nearby, I set up a pair of inserters, one burner and one basic, and gave each a wooden chest full of copper plates to move and another to move them to.

I let the boiler had finished it's piece of coal, and the burner inserter exhausted it's free starter energy (which was enough to move plates 3 times, running out of energy when it tried to turn back for a 4th) and emptied it's output chest.

Then I fed the burner inserter 1 coal, and connected power to the basic inserter.

The burner ran out with 285 plates - with all techs unlocked, that's 57 insertions.

The basic inserter emptied it's chest - all 16 stacks, 320 insertions - and there was still plenty of power in the accumulator. So I turned the inserter around, to have it start moving back. It's eventually emptied the accumulator after another 10 stacks 55 - 331 total insetions, and some amount of time spent burning idle power before I noticed it had emptied the chest before the accumulator. So I replaced with iron chests and repeated the whole process.

Second run:
burner repeated it's first performance, unsurprisingly, 285 plates moved in 57 total insertions.
basic inserter

This was not a perfect test - 1 boiler to 1 furnace is probably not optimal, and it included the reduced steam engine output during warm-up and cool-down, but that means electric might actually be even better than this test indicates. Any way you slice it, burner inserters are clearly far less efficient. Or maybe it means we're missing the boat and throwing out efficiency by keeping boilers full - maybe the idea steam power system, in terms of efficiency, is to have banks that rotate in shifts, squeeze every bit of juice out of the water as it cools instead of keeping it boiling? It's unrelated, but while the inserter burned off the accumulator, I set up a test for that nearby... in two places, I set up another pump->boiler->engine setup, giving each one 2 accumulators to charge. One got 1 coal, then waited til complete run-down, then got a 2nd piece. The other got 2 pieces of coal at once. The results: both put 8MJ of power into the accumulators. So if there's a difference it's small enough to round off.

Side-experiment completed, I turn back in the main test, where the one inserter still hasn't emptied it's accumulator, but I browse reddit a bit and come back and it finished. Final count: 26 stacks plus 65, 2665 items or 531 completed insertions. Compared to 57 for the burner inserter.

Yeah, burners are not more efficient. At all. Not even a little bit.

They are self-fueling now, so still a case to be made for them on some emergency backup steam boilers I suppose, but in an efficiency contest? Nope. They are not even in the contest.

The save file for the 50x50 world in which I conducted all these experiments is attached, if anyone wants to verify my results.

[MeduSalem]

I would have done further in depth including the passive draw, but ignored that because if its for back up power systems, then the subnetworks can be powered down.

It all boils down to how much fuel your boilers are burning,
if your steam engines are running full power, then electric would be better as you would be burning more fuel, less passive time.
If they're running pretty low, then burners

With Coal that might be true, if you are using Solid Fuel though, it is not.

I know from experience, because I always only use Steam Power, since I hate Solar Energy.

Even with Steam Engines running at 100% power the Burner Inserters still use less overall energy than regular Inserters because of how they still don't move 100% of the time being.

The first 3-4 Boilers and their respective Inserters which are doing most of the heating process might lose to regular Inserters, but the other 10 are idle for more than 90% of the time because it takes quite some time until the Boiler has burned through one single piece of Solid Fuel.

In the end I don't think that it matters much because both Inserters draw only marginally power/energy compared to the theoretical power output of the entire power plant. It's almost not worth discussing in the first place. It's like talking about squeezing out 1% more efficiency of the power plant. Not worth it.

The true advantage of Burner Inserters is that they will work independently from available power as long as there's fuel around. And that's something electric Inserters can't take away from them, especially if the electric Inserters become stuck in a power-death-spiral almost preventing the Power Plant from recovering from a power out.

Yeah, burners are not more efficient. At all. Not even a little bit.

Yeah, we already concluded that Burner Inserters with permanent workload are much less efficient and need more fuel to keep on running.

It's not about that anymore. It's about if the same holds true in low/mediocre workload, and in those cases the Burner Inserters are better/equal to regular Inserters.

[GopherAtl]

they're almost 10x more efficient under constant load; this means a regular inserter running constantly would burn the same as a burner operating 10% of the time. They only burn 400w when idle, so the point where they become less efficient is the point where that idle power drain is roughly 9 times the power drawn when active, which seems to average 6.2kW.



burners get 10.7% as much work for the same power potential, so use 9.35 times as much power over time, or 58kW, but that remains constant regardless of activation time. At a given percentage of activation 'a', basic inserters will average 6.2kW*a + 400W*(1-a). Burners win when that equals 58kW times the same activation rate.

6.2kW*a + 400W*(1-a) = 58kW * a
6.2kW*a - 400W*a + 400W = 58kW * a
(6.2 - .4 - 58) * kW * a = -.4kW
-52.2kW*a = -.4kW
a = .007663 = roughly 0.8% activation.

So, if the inserters are running less than 1% of the time, they will use less energy than a burner running the same percentage of the time. But they'll move more, because this still hasn't factored in the difference in speed - burners are slower, about 70% of the speed of basic inserters. So, closer to .5% activation. That's pretty low, but not out of the realm of possibility depending on how much you depend on your backup power generation.

tl;dr: if the inserter is called on to do no more than one insertion every 200 seconds, then burners would be more efficient.