33% efficient is low, and I'd probably pipe in steam (or even use tank trains) rather than take such an energy hit.timer67 wrote:Need to work out just how much power this thing should use, suggestions are welcome!
https://wiki.factorio.com/Power_productionCoal contains 8 MJ of energy, and boilers are 50% efficient, so every mining drill generates 2.1 MJ/second in the boilers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_tur ... efficiencyPractical thermal efficiency of a steam turbine varies with turbine size, load condition, gap losses and friction losses. They reach top values up to about 50% in a 1200 MW turbine; smaller ones have a lower efficiency.
That may be the purpose, but there's no harm in thinking the rest through. E.g. Nightinggale's idea of (indirectly) solar-heating water in order to generate power at night without accumulators is a good one, though probably making an effective power plant this way would be hard.Ranakastrasz wrote:You all are missing the point. The purpose is to make steam for oil recipes, not power production.
That would be a 100% efficient boiler and 50% efficient steam engine. Having both at 50% would result in 0.5*0.5 = 25% efficiency.BlakeMW wrote:I think 50% sounds right. Here are two rationales for 50%:
Steel Furnace uses 180kW of fuel energy.
Electric Furnace uses 180kW of energy, which is 180kW of electricity (i.e. from solar) or 360kW of fuel energy if used via boilers.
By the game's logic, 180kW of electricity is equivalent to 180kW of fuel energy when used to heat things. Therefore, it should take the same treatment as fuel energy when put through a boiler - 50%.
Sounds about right. 38% is pretty much the standard when building standard powerplants while the highest I know of is 49% and that one is custom built/modified for research in efficiency. Another interesting fact is that steam engines heats up water as a byproduct, mainly from cooling the condenser (which increase power efficiency). This means getting 45% power and 50% heat is in use. In other words they take in cold water and heat it to 80 °C, which can then be used for whatever you want to use hot water for, like baths to industry. Usually heat exchangers are in use to avoid using the water, which runs through the powerplant itself.leoch wrote:On the other hand, coal plant efficiency is 32-42% according to figures I can find.
IRL waste heat from processes is used for heating, the problem is that by then most the energy which can be used for performing work, has already been extracted, if more work can be extracted, it would have been. So it is used for heating, either human beings or potentially other biological processes (i.e. greenhouses, bioreactors). But in Factorio there isn't much which needs heating.Nightinggale wrote: This actually gives me an idea. Could it be useful to have water heating abilities in steam engine ingame? Say 50% electricity and 25% hot water. What would we need the water for besides running steam engines?
Not entirely correct. Steam engines works like this:BlakeMW wrote:IRL steam engines can work in basically one of two ways, either they take high pressure steam and then release low pressure steam into the environment, or they condense the steam back into hot water and recirculate it back through the boiler to increase efficiency relative to heating cold water. Factorio steam engines are of the former kind, but even in the latter case you don't really get to siphon off the hot water - doing so defeats the purpose of starting with pre-heated water.
I'd also love to see a setup where these are used with solar in place of accumulators. In other words, use solar + electric boilers to make steam during the day, then use stored steam at night for power.Ranakastrasz wrote:You all are missing the point. The purpose is to make steam for oil recipes, not power production.
