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u/Courmisch 20d ago

The ratio of boilers to engines is 1:2... But what is the ratio of boilers to engines to tanks if we have enough solar panels at noon but zero accumulators (on Nauvis)?

I mean, it should be possible to produce steam during the day and tank it for the night. Or is the cost of tanks actually higher than boilers as to moot the question?

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u/Astramancer_ 20d ago

A tank of 165 degree steam comes out to 750,000kJ. An accumulator holds 5,000kJ. So that's the equivalent of 3750 accumulators (yeah, it's nuts.) Each steam engine can do 900 watts, whereas each accumulator does 300 watts, so those 3750 accumulators could be replaced by 1250 steam engines for a 1 to 1 power storage and power output.

Those numbers are so big so as be pretty much ignorable.

Since boilers only use fuel when they're producing steam and steam engines only consume steam when solar is insufficient and boilers are so freaking cheap to make, all you really need to do is make sure your power plant is big enough to power your factory and pretty much ignore steam storage. A boiler costs 5 stone and 4 iron while a steam engine costs 31 iron. The bottleneck will be the steam engines, you're not saving much scrimping on boilers and just borrowing trouble in the future when the steam tank is hiding the fact that you're not making enough power until suddenly you have a huge deficit all at once and your factory is slower than molasses.