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Aerial: An efficient 2xN reactor

https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=100402

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Aerial: An efficient 2xN reactor

Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2021 8:08 am
by farcast
TL;DR Feature list:

-Belt fed
-Full roboport coverage for automated construction
-All in one self tiling blueprint
-3.04 GW base + 1.6GW per added segment
-Tankless main reactor
-Works in all orientations
-Fuel efficiency ranges from 37% to 100%, reaching 100% when running at 63% power capacity or above
-Won't burn fuel if no power is used
-Self starting... technically
-High infinite tiling density of 231 kW/tile
-90 tile wide lake needed
Aerial.jpg
Aerial.jpg (455.36 KiB) Viewed 2764 times
Aerial has enough turbines for maximum sustained power output and uses minimal pumps, but the water pumps are far apart, so it needs a lake that's 90 tiles wide. Inserters, pumps, and combinators are on an isolated network with solar panels and accumulators. It has full roboport and radar coverage for automated construction. I've tested the reactor and it works in all orientations.
Aerial network.jpg
Aerial network.jpg (55.3 KiB) Viewed 2764 times
The name is based on what the electric network looks like on the map. It looks like an old television aerial.
Aerial overlap.jpg
Aerial overlap.jpg (75.79 KiB) Viewed 2764 times
The blueprint is designed to be self tiling. The two end segments overlap in such a way that the missing pieces are filled in to create a middle segment, while one-time pieces are blocked from being placed again. The base blueprint is 2x10 reactors, and each additional segment is 2x5 reactors.
Aerial pilot.jpg
Aerial pilot.jpg (192.83 KiB) Viewed 2764 times
The circuit is based on foamy's awesome idea. In short, the steam consumed by a single turbine is used to count down to the next fuel insertion. The ratio of reactor power vs turbine power is used to determine the maximum amount of steam-time to be added after fuel insertions that still maintains maximum power output. It usually works out to around 12000, the amount of steam one turbine can consume in 200 seconds. The maximum remaining steam-time is limited after the fuel burns out so that energy lost due to the reactor reaching max temperature is compensated by refueling sooner. What it must be limited to depends on the percentage of energy produced after one fuel insertion that can be buffered as heat or steam (with many complications). Figuring out the buffer size by hand is difficult, so I came up with an automated system for finding it, which is also in that thread.

Don't worry, this reactor come with the right settings and you don't need to change them (unless reactor/turbine stats are modded).

For those that want to add their own circuitry, the circuit will only output exactly -1 on steam to enable the inserters.

This method of fuel control is self starting as long as the pilot turbine is still running. Since the pilot reactor uses a simpler control method that is itself self starting, the whole reactor is self starting. It's not very proactive about it though, so to speed things along you can copy-rotate-paste-rotate-paste the two constant combinators by the lamps to manually insert fuel cells for the main reactor. Speaking of lamps, one just stays on when the pilot has steam, one blinks when running below ~50% power capacity, and stays solid when above, and the last blinks when running above ~50% capacity.

Another benefit is that steam tanks are no longer needed to improve fuel efficiency, which I think is quite liberating after who knows how many hours spent figuring out where to put them. The same goes with heatpipes, I no longer need to care about using as many as possible to avoid using steam tanks, so the reactor can get a significant improvement in fuel efficiency while also being as close to ideal for UPS as such a reactor can be.

By design, this reactor can't buffer a complete fuel cycle of energy, so fuel efficiency won't always be 100%. Besides that, the circuit is also set to waste 0.2% of energy as a safety margin to prevent any potential errors from building up to a brownout, so max efficiency is actually 99.8%. If you don't want to have this safety margin, then set the steam value in the settings to 11782. The reactor has a minimum fuel efficiency, and every percent of maximum power output used while fuel is burning directly adds to the efficiency until it reaches 100%. The minimum efficiency is 37%, so the efficiency graph looks like this:
Aerial efficiency.png
Aerial efficiency.png (6.67 KiB) Viewed 2764 times
It's supposed to be just one blueprint. Due to the character limit, I had to make a separate blueprint for landfill.
Edit: Or you can download the attached text file for the complete blueprint.

Aerial BP:

Re: Aerial: An efficient 2xN reactor

Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2021 8:09 am
by farcast
Aerial landfill & roboports :

Re: Aerial: An efficient 2xN reactor

Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2021 10:46 am
by mrvn
Attach them as file instead of pasting them when they get too big. You can attach a whole book that way.

Re: Aerial: An efficient 2xN reactor

Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2021 7:48 pm
by farcast
mrvn wrote: Wed Oct 27, 2021 10:46 am Attach them as file instead of pasting them when they get too big. You can attach a whole book that way.
That makes sense, I'll add it to the first post.
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