Factorio Forums

Hi,

So I'd like to try and create a Solar Boiler and was looking for some input/advise on how this might be accomplished.

I don't think it can be strictly a Solar Boiler, but would have to be a Electric/Solar Boiler.

This can be accomplished by changing the "energy_source" from "burner" to "electric"
Them spawning a hidden Solar panel under the newly created boiler.

This will result in it using the solar power during the day and if connected to electricity grid, it will consume that during the night.

This is not ideal, since the boiler will also act as a solar panel and create electricity if not used as a boiler.

But don't know if there is a way around this.

What "usage_priority" should I give the boiler? "Solar" or "secondary-input"?
If I leave the boiler's energy_consumption = "1.8MW", should I give the hidden solar panel the same production = "1.8MW"
This scares me, since as mentioned before, I don't want to have people use the hidden solar panel as a energy source...
If I lower the "1.8MW", to let's say 450kw, or lower, then it might be OP, since you can just connect regular power to it... Anyway of preventing this?

Does " target_temperature = 165," play into this at all?


I'd appreciate some input on creating a solar boiler.
Thanks.

I've pondered that concept a few times over the years and my conclusion has always been that it's not (currently) possible to meaningfully implement. If you throw "good performance" from the list of criteria (why would you do that?), and considering the current possibilities i'd say some scripted entity that creates heat (yea, heat, like the nuclear reactor does) would currently be your best bet. But given that you'd have to use on_tick to make possibly thousands of entities create heat that way performance would be abysmal (same thing as spawning hot water into windmills a few versoins back). And like you noticed yourself, using any form of hidden solar panel to do *anything* is always broken by design because there's no way to prevent them being connected and used directly.

eradicator wrote:I've pondered that concept a few times over the years and my conclusion has always been that it's not (currently) possible to meaningfully implement. If you throw "good performance" from the list of criteria (why would you do that?), and considering the current possibilities i'd say some scripted entity that creates heat (yea, heat, like the nuclear reactor does) would currently be your best bet. But given that you'd have to use on_tick to make possibly thousands of entities create heat that way performance would be abysmal (same thing as spawning hot water into windmills a few versoins back). And like you noticed yourself, using any form of hidden solar panel to do *anything* is always broken by design because there's no way to prevent them being connected and used directly.

You could use dummy items for a heat generating burner, and use on_nth_tick to simply refresh the burner fuel at the same time every day, and adjust the fuel value of the item to last for a certain portion of the day. That would let the boiler consume heat in a regular cycle with days/nights. When building initially, insert fuel programmatically and adjust the amount of fuel remaining with LuaBurner.remaining_burning_fuel based on time of day. Play around with minimum operating temperatures, maybe have a heat draining entity as well so that at night time it cools off completely.

chrisgbk wrote:You could use dummy items for a heat generating burner, and use on_nth_tick to simply refresh the burner fuel at the same time every day, and adjust the fuel value of the item to last for a certain portion of the day. That would let the boiler consume heat in a regular cycle with days/nights. When building initially, insert fuel programmatically and adjust the amount of fuel remaining with LuaBurner.remaining_burning_fuel based on time of day. Play around with minimum operating temperatures, maybe have a heat draining entity as well so that at night time it cools off completely.

I've thought of similar things, but that approach can not produce a gradual change in energy output during dusk/dawn.