Factorio Forums

I'm sure I can't be the first to work on this issue. I looked around and found a post from 2014 where the poster was supporting three radars. viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3925

This is what I came up with:
This 30 MJ capacity set up runs down to about 400 kJ before the solar panels take over in the morning. I used medium electric poles instead of a substation simply to get a symmetric appearance. I tried to get something working with a substation, but never found anything I particularly cared for.

I'm sure someone will notice my panel to accumulator ratio is a bit high, 1.33. This is necessary because of the constant 300 kW pull from the radar. Without the additional panels the accumulators don't get fully charged during the day. Also the additional panels provide just enough extra solar power generation during the dawn and dusk to avoid a brief outage from happening.

The image is also available here: http://imgur.com/6n3yEzD

Actually, double checking myself.... I was looking at the ratio backwards -- wasn't I? It's .84 accumulators to panels. I have .75, so I actually have a slightly low ratio. D'OH! Anyway, this ratio works well for the application.

Pretty cool, I like the idea that it can exist as its own off-grid outpost.
Radar attracts biters though, doesn't it? I think I would add some defense, which would probably necessitate another panel or two.

Well, it doesn't create pollution and placing any created item reduces base generation possibilities. You could probably create a simple one like this where you don't particularly feel threatened. And then another with walls and turrets in more dangerous situations. Laser turrets probably pull too much juice to be useful in this kind of application, I'd probably just use normal gun turrets in those situations.

Two things led me to working on this...

1) The radar outposts I've seen Bentham make in his Let's Play vids (https://www.youtube.com/user/MangledPork/videos)

2) The fact that when my largest and longest played factory is idle, more than half the power usage goes to radars...

The ones Bentham uses are daylight usage only, 1 radar, 1 small electric pole, 5 solar panels. But I didn't like not being able to see things at night. So, I decided to work on creating something like this -- as an small bonus, the image in the world map is amusing...