Factorio Forums

Hi Folks,

I do have two questions regarding the consumption of electric energy.

#1: Do structures that are running idle consume energy? For example, I tend to shut down my plants producing Basic goods like belts, inserters and the like once I have prdouced up to a certani buffer size. This is mainly to avoid wastng ressource by buidling up unneccessary stock sizes. As production plants cannot be "turned off" using the circuit Network, I "stop" the plant by either
> disabling the inserter removing finished products from the plant based on a Network conditions or
> producing into a chest with limited stock size.

In either case, the plant will stop producing once the internal buffer is filled up. Same goes for mining drills.

QUESTION No. 1: Does the plant or mining drill in that case consume energy or not? Or at least at a reduced rate? Actually, there's nothing turned on, except the lights and the coffee machine.

QUESTION No. 2: In case the energy consumed by the plant is reduced, or in case I decide to switch of a whole branch of my factory, what happens in the power plant? Obviously, the power plant will provide less energy to my factory. Will the burner react to this decrease in demand with a decrease in fuel consumtion? Or are they always running on "full", thus using the same amount of fuel like they would with the Boiler running at 100%.

They have an "Idle Drain" stat that's very low, I think less than 10% of their "Active Drain".

If you look at Steam Engines they have a "Current Performance" and "Available Performance" stat, if your base is not using as much energy as the Steam Engines can provide they don't run at full power. This means boilers don't have to work as hard to keep the water hot and they consume less energy. In fact you can see this, try getting to a point Current Performance is ~50% and count how many of your boilers are actually running. The 50% closest to the Offshore Pump should be running, and the other half closest to the Steam Engines should be idle and not consuming any Coal at all.

Actually that's a point, I think only machines running on electricity have an Idle Drain. Stuff like Burner Miners and Furnaces don't consume any power while idle.

Great. Thank you!!

Actually, not all electrically powered entities have a drain. E.g. electric miners don't, inserters and assemblers do.
Also, you never lose energy in factorio. Meaning every piece of coal you burn in a boiler gives you exactly 4MJ of energy that is used somewhere. You'll never burn coal while you can't use the energy. Only time you lose energy is when deconstructing a boiler that is halfway burning a coal, for example.

Thanks for the insight