Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Heat Exchanger should be able to connect to the circuit network

What ?

I think you should be able to connect the heat exchanger to a circuit network
Different things you could do with this: read the Exchanger's Temperature, Disable the heat exchanger, or even possibly set a max temperature for the heat exchanger!

Why ?

You can connect almost anything in the game to circuit networks. Chests, belts, Drills, Inserters, Logistics network, gates, trains, heck you can even connect the circuit network stuff to circuit networks! The one thing you CANT read with circuit networks is the temperature in your nuclear power plant.
This doesn't seem like it'd be a massive change to any mechanics in the game, but it could have some nice benefits. Overall I think this change is a high benefit and low effort change to the game.

You also can‘t connect boilers to the circuit network. My point is, the heat exchanger temperature will, once started never drop below 500 deg. any temperature of the heat pipes above 500 is effectively speaking storage. Aside from those technicalities, there is no other use for it, then creating steam. Wich can be monitored just fine. So at least I can‘t see a practically in game value of circuit connectable heat exchangers.

conn11 wrote: Tue Dec 10, 2019 6:56 am You also can‘t connect boilers to the circuit network. My point is, the heat exchanger temperature will, once started never drop below 500 deg. any temperature of the heat pipes above 500 is effectively speaking storage. Aside from those technicalities, there is no other use for it, then creating steam. Wich can be monitored just fine. So at least I can‘t see a practically in game value of circuit connectable heat exchangers.

If you know the heat you can calculate the power you can get from it. This can be used to calculate if you need to feed nuclear reactor now.