Fuel Generator

The Fuel Generator is a Building which generates 150MW of Power by using as input item. The fuel burn time is 5 seconds. For a brief guide about setting up oil power, refer to the section below.

Generators per node
A single crude oil node can support the following number of fuel generators operating a peak capacity:

* The decimal in the Number of oil refinery/fuel generator column means the last generator might not be able to run at 100%. Underclock the last generator to prevent a power trip.

** Value calculated from the rounded down number of fuel generators. *** As of Update 3, there is no pipe that can transport more than 300 units of liquid per minute. Therefore, a Pure should only be overclocked to 125%.

The equation for the Number of Fuel Generators is:

$$\frac{\mathit{OilPumpedPerMin}\times \frac{2}{3} \times \mathit{FuelBurnTime}}{60sec}$$

The equation for Power Efficiency is:

$$\frac{\Bigl( \frac{\mathit{RoundeddownPower}}{\mathit{PowerUsed}} \Bigr)}{100}$$

Values closer to 1 are better. (maybe we just drop the /100 and call it "closer to 100 is better... but it's not exactly a percent it's a unitless measure that's designed to illustrate that you get less MW generated per MW used)

The equation for Alternate Power Efficiency demonstrates what percent of the power generated is available for use outside the process to generate the power, it's equation is:

$${\Bigl( \frac{\mathit{RoundeddownPower}-{PowerUsed}}{\mathit{RoundeddownPower}} \Bigr)}*{100}$$

For a fuel generator that is not overclocked, Fuel burn time is 5 seconds (displayed next to the stopwatch in the fuel generator UI).

Fuel burn time and peak capacity
The real Fuel Burn Time with all generators depends on the amount of power actually being used. However, the UI does not show the real burn time, it shows the burn time if the generator is operating at peak capacity.

So, the 5 seconds burn time for Fuel Generators shown in-game is how long it takes to burn 1 Fuel if all of the power that the generator can possibly produce is being used .

For example: if a base has 1 Fuel Generator, and is using all of the possible 150 MW, the fuel burn time will be 5 seconds. But, if the base is only using 75 MW, the fuel burn time will be (supposedly) doubled. (More research needed on this)

Stage 1

 * 1) Assume you only have Mk4 belts at this stage. A pure Crude Oil node is preferred for setting up oil power.
 * 2) Build an Oil Pump on it, then Overclock it to 200%.
 * 3) Split the output of the miner and feed it to 8 Oil refineries.
 * 4) Merge the output of all the oil refineries into a single belt, then split it to feed 25 fuel generators.
 * 5) A manifold arrangement (aka. in-line splitting and merging) is advised for the above setup.
 * 6) To prime the oil power setup, use a Portable Miner to mine 100 barrels of crude oil, craft them into fuel in a craft bench, then manually insert them equally into 3 of the fuel generators.

You now have 3750MW of sustained power available.

Stage 2

 * 1) Assume you have unlocked Mk5 belts.
 * 2) Increase the clock speed of the oil pump to 250%.
 * 3) Increase the number of oil refineries to 10 and the number of fuel generators to 32 Fuel generators.

You now have 4800MW of peak power available (4687.5MW sustained).

Stage 3

 * 1) Assume you have unlocked the Alternative Recipe for Turbofuel.
 * 2) Mine 300/min of coal and sulfur each and turn them into Compacted Coal using 10 assemblers.
 * 3) From the output of 10 oil refineries above, combine it with the compacted coal to make 375 turbofuel/min by using 20 assemblers.
 * 4) Split the turbofuel into 84 fuel generators.

You now have 12600MW of peak power available (12500MW sustained).

Trivia

 * The Fuel Generator, like all power generating buildings, behaves differently to other buildings when overclocked. See Clock Speed for more info.
 * Biofuel can be used to feed fuel generators.

History

 * Patch 0.1.5 (experimental): changed crafting recipe from 3 Heavy Modular Frame, 5 Motor, and 5 Circuit Board to 10 Heavy Modular Frame, 10 Motor, and 5 Computer