Thermodynamics 101

[Perq]

Honestly, RimWorld's power scale is kinda awkward.
It is -50oC outside and you are inside of a building made of wood (so no good insulation)?
No problem, two 175W heaters will do the job... wait what. Either the wood is hyper-insulating, genetically modified mutant or we have a problem here.

While it MAY make sense for light devices to be comparable in energy consumption from game-play perspective, it makes absolute zero sense physics wise.

For the scale, a human being is rated ~100W for heating calculations (when calculating needed power for some in-door objects). So two pawns in a room should be making a major impact on the temperature inside, right? (by the way, it could be a cool idea to include pawn-heat into the room calculations... could make all pawns enter one room to survive overly cold winter, or something. :V)
Some other numbers:
- 2000W heater isn't a big one, even. 175W heater is, well, laughable. E-cigs have heating coils which reach 150W. That is a handheld device powered by 2 18650 batteries, and not a stationary generator or wind turbine, lol.
- 1kW generator is ant-scale. Typical stationary generators reach ~~15-50MW (that is 15 000kW), and that is only the electric power. In perfect running conditions they reach ~50% efficiency, meaning they generate as much heat (which could be used in heating... just sayian. This is called cogeneration, CHP in short)
- 1,6kW lamp should be heating the room with around ~80% of it's power. Old-type (as in non LED) street light bulbs were somewhere around 1kW. They generated it mostly in form of heat, of course.
- 250W deep-drill would take years to drill anything. Think this is also a good way to balance it a little bit, too, since it is very effective way of getting stuff.
- Most work benches have their power needs waaaay off. A metal-working bench taking as much power as 3 light bulbs? Daymn, son!
- A ship reactor (which runs on uranium) generating 1kW is... not even funny. How is it supposed to power dem-plasma engines with 1kW of power? Typical electric kettle exceeds that, lol.
EDIT: Bonus calculation point - An object 1km high in the sky weighting 100kg (an average person, lets assume) with Earth-like gravity has a potential energy of 100*10*1000=1MJ (lets assume that gravitation is constant at this height).
A 1kW engine would have to work for 16 minutes and 40 seconds (1000 seconds) to generate that kind of energy, assuming 100% efficiency, and completely ignoring everything else.
10 people is 2h 46m 40s.
This is ignoring ship's mass completely. And that other parts of the ships might need energy, too. V:
And 1km doesn't sound nearly enough to leave the planet.

[travin]

In all honesty, full conservation of energy will never really be observed in RimWorld. Stick as many heaters/coolers as you want outside, and you're not going to make a dent in the local temperature.

I haven't tried it with heaters outside (yet)--in theory it should work exactly the same--but it does, however, work with a camp fire.

[mrm]

Yep, electric smelter should take a few kW to smelt anything. 200W for TV is too much, 50W is more real. And really? Space technology advanced by 3000 years from now, and we have 200W tube TVs

Check Hans Lemurson posts, its good explanation. Every kind of energy is transformed into heat at the end, and there's no 100% efficient device, unless its a heater. So heaters are 100% efficient? Even if they have a fan and an indicator light? Air movement is transformed into heat, because air hit various objects and creates friction. Indicator light is producing light which hits walls etc and is transformed there into heat. Don't forget that electric motor which spins fan also has some efficiency, something around 80%, so rest of it is heat, produced by friction in bearings etc.

Deep drills should draw many kW to operate. 250W is just hilarious.

Coolers with 200W consumption can cool down a regular fridge, not entire room (without insulation). If a heater is raising temperature from -10 to +20 in a room 36m2 (6x6 tiles, small rimworld room), and it is taking (should be taking) 3.6kW, then a cooler which tries to cool down the same room from +20 to -10 should take at least two times more power, because coolers also have their efficiency (don't know the actual numbers, but i assume 50% is a very kind number for them). When the rest of this power goes? Also into heat, coolers are very hot on the radiator side. This actually somehow works in rimworld, we can cool down a fridge room and heat the dining room at the same time, but we should get more temperature change at the hot side than on the cold, because of efficiency and wasted energy.

[Thyme]

Coolers actually have an efficiency above 100%. This is because they move heat rather than generating it. (They need x Joule of energy to remove y Joule of heat, while x < y; Heat output then is x + y). That is the reason ground heating works (not only works, but works cheaply).

[travin]

Yep, electric smelter should take a few kW to smelt anything.

I wanna know why a smelter or cremation unit doesn't bake out a room, or catch a wooden wall on fire, yet the thermal leakage for a refrigerated room is like a sieve.

[Perq]

Coolers actually have an efficiency above 100%. This is because they move heat rather than generating it. (They need x Joule of energy to remove y Joule of heat, while x < y; Heat output then is x + y). That is the reason ground heating works (not only works, but works cheaply).

Well, to be honest you can't really be talking about efficiency when it comes to cooling. From heating standpoint it is more than 100% efficiency, but when talking about cooling you care about the heat taken out of the cooled system. And that can never be above 100%.

While we're at it, I'd love to bring to attention that things like Absorption Heat Pumps exist. Honestly, in Rimworld-like conditions, this seems to be a very good idea. :V

[hwfanatic]

Hmmm, which gives me another thought, why can't we build bricks out of ice and make igloos?

Because igloos are made out of snow blocks. 

[Mikhail Reign]

Hmmm, which gives me another thought, why can't we build bricks out of ice and make igloos?

Because igloos are made out of snow blocks. 

They can be

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=ice+block+build&client=firefox-b-ab&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjZiM2u4ILSAhVEJZQKHW9JBFYQ_AUICCgB&biw=1540&bih=834

[hwfanatic]

When created for fun, I guess. For practical applications, the ice is too good of a conductor.

[Mikhail Reign]

Would it tho? Since its a non metal, it would has very few free conductive electrons available....

I mean thats why you have to clean out your freezer - the ice insulates the piping and makes it not work. I'm not saying it would be the best thing in the world....

EDIT

I had to look this up. Curiosity.
Ref=http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/thermal-conductivity-d_429.html

Higher is better

So yeah - its not great. But its not bad. Its a little worse then dirt and concrete. Better then steel. About on par with slate.... So it would be on my list of stuff to try.

[Shurp]

I gave up on shoveling at my ice sheet base because it's snowing all the time.  My base should be buried by now    So, ice, packed snow, whichever, it would be cool if we could make ice huts.

And then you'd have *another* reason to not let your greenhouse get too warm.  Don't want to melt the walls or ceiling!

[TheMeInTeam]

The wattage is obviously not to scale.  It's not even proportionate within the scale used.

You might as well just look at the W as "power units", and try not to think about the relative usage of a single indoor light vs a machining or hydroponic table too much.

[Hans Lemurson]

The wattage is obviously not to scale.  It's not even proportionate within the scale used.

You might as well just look at the W as "power units", and try not to think about the relative usage of a single indoor light vs a machining or hydroponic table too much.

Or.... I could try to work out the constants for Heat-Production and Thermal Conductivity in terms of "Meters" (Approx size of tile) and "RTUs" (Rimworld Thermal Units), and then try to determine what a reasonable value would be between the number of Watt-Hours consumed and the RTUs generated.

Initial conclusions: This is a lot harder than it looks!  Thermal losses don't scale directly with wall perimeter.

[Thyme]

Coolers actually have an efficiency above 100%. This is because they move heat rather than generating it. (They need x Joule of energy to remove y Joule of heat, while x < y; Heat output then is x + y). That is the reason ground heating works (not only works, but works cheaply).

Well, to be honest you can't really be talking about efficiency when it comes to cooling. From heating standpoint it is more than 100% efficiency, but when talking about cooling you care about the heat taken out of the cooled system. And that can never be above 100%. [...]

A heat pump does always heat and cool. The only difference is which of the two sides we use. There is no difference. Where's all the heat coming from when it's not from the cooling side? The word I was looking for is the energy efficiency ratio or coefficient of performance (hard to translate such words). It's the ratio (moved heat engery) / (energy input). Ground heating would be stupid if that number weren't bigger than 1. The actual efficiency is of course lower than 1, because heat pumps are a reversed heat engine (another translation, force-warmth-prozess maybe?) and of course entropy.

[carewolf]

The difference comes from the inefficiency of our colonists' ability to create very bright light sufficient for growing

But that inefficiency is heat!