As you expand your factory inSatisfactory, you’ll need to provide more and more power to ensure your machines continue to run. As a FICSIT Pioneer, the worst thing you can do is be inefficient. Luckily, after completingPhase 1 of the Space Elevatorproject, you’ll unlock the most efficient power supplies in the early game.
While Biomass Burners require you to continuously gather Biomass from leaves and wood, Coal-Powered Generators can be infinitely supplied, providing infinite energy. Below, we’ll take a look at how to set up your first coal-based power grid.
How To Set Up Coal Power
Coal-Powered Generators produce 75 MW of energy as long as they are powered by both coal and water. Coal-Powered Generators take 15 coal per minute and 45 cubic meters of water per minute to fuel.
This means thatthree Water Extractorswill fueleight Coal-Powered Generatorsexactly. For eight Coal-Powered Generators, you’ll need 120 coal per minute to fully fuel them. This8:3 ratio of Generators to Water Extractorsis the main thing to keep in mind when setting up your coal factory to ensure maximum efficiency.
This also allows you to easily expand by adding three more Water Extractors and eight Coal-Powered Generators.
Unlike other resources you’ve dealt with until now, water is a fluid, so it has different rules that apply to it. Most importantly, itcan’t flow directly up without some assistance. The Water Extractor itself is able to provide some pump, but most of the time you will need to use aPipeline Pumpto get your water tohigher elevations.
For the actual setup, we recommend placingtwo rows of four Coal-Powered Generators on opposite sides of one another, then running yourcoal belts through the middle, splitting them into the generator inputs.
For water, it’s best tospace them evenlyso that you don’t have a shortage of water at the back of the line. you’re able to either do two Water Extractors to the left and one to the right, or vice versa, or have one on the left, one on the right, and one somewhere in the middle.
Of course, there are any number of ways you can set up your coal power factory, so experiment with what works for you. Thelocation you build your factoryin also plays a big part; if possible, it’s best tobuild your power plant in a location that has both coal and water nearby.
However, if you have to choose between building near either coal or water, we recommendbuilding near waterand thenbringing in your coal from somewhere else. This is because a line of Mk.2 Conveyor Belts can provide enough coal on a single line, whereas Mk.1 water pipes will need more than one due to their 300 cubic meter capacity.
