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A simple question; how much energy (in joules) do you need to produce 1 solar panel? Including mining and refining resources, and assembling materials (and ignoring inserters). I want to make an automated solar panel factory and I wonder if it even is power efficient

SPolygon wrote:A simple question; how much energy (in joules) do you need to produce 1 solar panel? Including mining and refining resources, and assembling materials (and ignoring inserters). I want to make an automated solar panel factory and I wonder if it even is power efficient

Interesting question. So interesting in fact I build a tool to answer such questions.

Using electric miners, steel furnaces and assembling machine 2 the cost would be:
46458.928571428571429 kilojoule/item

Using stone furnaces instead the energy cost increases significantly:
75596.428571428571429 kilojoule/item

So in 18~30 minutes the solar panel would produce enough energy to offset it's own energy cost.

I can confirm those values. Additionally, if you use electric furnaces and stuff everything full with efficiency 1 modules, each solar panel will cost 16 269 kJ.

Last time I checked, you can not put efficiency modules into electric furnaces.

GeniusIsme wrote:Last time I checked, you can not put efficiency modules into electric furnaces.

You could do that already in 0.8.8 which is the first version of factorio that I played. It was released on Jan 09, 2014. When did you last check?

But you couldn't on 11.1 - viewtopic.php?f=7&t=6337

A am also pretty sure developers said somewhere they will prohibit efficiency modules in the furnace, but I cannot find it now.

Anyway, loaded the game just to check, and yes you can put efficiency in furnace. Maybe I will be using them again someday