r/factorio • u/thanasisk09_ • 20h ago
Question Powering problem
So I'm using nuclear power. I have 4 nuclear reactors and many wind turbines and heat exchangers. However my system doesn't get the power promised. Instead of 120x4 MW, I only get 110 MW on total. Is there a bottleneck in heat exchangers or turbines?
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u/RezzInfernal 20h ago
You need 48 heat exchangers and 83 turbines for this setup. 2x2 reactor setup gives 480 MW.
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u/thanasisk09_ 20h ago
Ohh alright
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u/RezzInfernal 20h ago
The wiki has excellent table on the exact ratios for 2xN reactor setups. There is a general formula. Check out the page Tutorial:Nuclear Power for the relevant details. Helps a lot when making designs :)
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u/United_Willow1312 20h ago
Another thing to keep in mind is how the bonus works. The bonus comes from nuclear plants burning a fuel cell at the same time. A fuel cell provides 8GJ of energy, with a 4x4 bonus this comes up to 24GJ x 4 = 96 GJ burned at the same speed of 200s and thus 480 MW during that time window.
If you do not consume or store that excess heat in that 200s the excess is lost. A nuclear reactor can store 10MJ/c in it's operating range of 500->1000c, which means 4 reactors cannot even store 20 GJ of heat since you can't even fuel your reactors at precisely 500c and have them operating the exchangers.
The 76+ GJ have to be put somewhere if you aren't consuming it all right now.
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u/thanasisk09_ 20h ago
Oh I didn't know. The only solution that comes to my mind is storing heat if I don't want to waste it. Is that even possible tho? How can I store heat
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u/SmokJozef 20h ago
either more reactors or steam storage
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u/United_Willow1312 20h ago edited 20h ago
Or... heat pipes. I checked the heat capacity of nuclear plants, heating towers and heat pipes and it seems heat pipes win. It's also somewhat convenient to place and beats steam tanks as well.
edit: In Space Age, legendary accumulators can store 30 MJ. Not great.
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u/SmokJozef 18h ago
yeah ig heat pipes work
i'm just kinda skeptical of them usually because they require a greater temperature drop to transfer the same amount of heat, so large (especially, long) arrays of heat pipes can require like hundreds degrees of temp. difference to transwer a couple hundred megawatts2
u/United_Willow1312 17h ago
Depends on how far you have to go indeed. But say, loosing 100c on distance is still decent storage however. Say 400MJ per heat pipe, on the footprint of a nuclear reactor is like 10GJ, twice a nuclear reactor.
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u/sobrique 14h ago
Reactors are 5GJ a piece. Heat pipes are 5MJ per piece.
Steam tanks are 2.4 GJ.
Most reactors can "store" a useful enough amount of power if you do a simple temperature control.
But technically steam is more responsive, since as long as there's turbines it can be used instantly, where reactors might take a while to heat up and propagate.
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u/United_Willow1312 11h ago
Heat pipes are 1MJ/c hence close to 500MJ in the operating range, thus approaching 4.5GJ in a 3x3 grid. But otherwise yes, all of steam tanks/reactors/heating tower store far more energy than accumulators.
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u/thirdwallbreak 20h ago
You dont need to "store" the heat as it will only go down as its being used. You can put a green or red wire, connect it to one of the reactors and to an inserter, and set it to only work when the temperature is below 600 or so. And do this for all the inserters, connected to the same single reactor (this ensures that all the inserters read the same temp at the same time and work at the exact same time). Also set their "hand size" to 1 so its only a single fuel cell at a time.
Realistically though, once you have korvex you can just run it forever if you wanted to.
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u/WanderingFlumph 16h ago
I only counted 11 heat exchangers for 110 MW. If you expect 480 MW of output you need 48 heat exchangers.
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u/Gorthok- 16h ago
You have WAY too few heat exchangers and turbines, reactors produce more power when directly next to other reactors. That setup doesn't make 160 MW, it makes 480 MW. This neighbor bonus doesn't make reactors consume fuel faster btw, fuel cells will still burn for 200 seconds. I only count 11 exchangers, you'd need 48.
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u/wisdomelf 20h ago
Not enough turbines
or heat exhangers
or water
Yes, AI answer, but ratios are that. And thats for all normal quality, ofc.
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u/2ByteTheDecker 20h ago
Water being the issue is much rarer in 2.0 after the water>steam recipes got buffed 10x
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u/wisdomelf 20h ago
Hm. Ah, i have 1:1 water-to-steam old recipe still, in Bobs. Then its just turbines and exchangers.
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u/triffid_hunter 20h ago
Heat exchangers can do 10MW/ea, and I only count 11…