A question I have been pondering, but have not yet fully figured out the answer to, is whether it is possible to create a "Perpetual Energy Farm": A Sun Lamp powered by Fueled Generator whose wood comes from the trees being grown by said Lamp.
As we know, neither conservation of energy nor conservation of mass is an inherent property of game simulations (I'm looking at you, Dwarven Water Reactor), so there is no reason to reject this outright. It simply comes down to the math.
-How much Power does a Sun Lamp need? (assuming it turns off during the plant rest period)
If paired with a battery, can a single Fueled Generator power a Sun Lamp all day and recharge at night? Or does that waste too much fuel, and you should try to equalize your Lamps and Generators?
-How much wood does a Fueled Generator consume?
(20 per day, I believe)
-How long does it take for a Tree to grow?
(Wiki says Poplars are 15 days)
-How much wood per tree?
I think 40 when mature
-How dense can trees be planted around a Sun Lamp?
Looks like 25 on average, 30 max (using careful layout)
...
By my calculations, 5 Sun Lamps can be constantly powered by 8 Fueled Generators at a cost of 160 wood/day. These lamps will provide growing area for ~125 trees. If each tree gives 40 wood at maturity, then we are looking at a total harvest of 5,000 wood. Dividing the yield by the daily wood consumption gives us 31.25 days/tree. If we can Plant/Grow/Chop a tree in ~30 days, then the self-fueling tree farm starts to look like a viable possibility.
Am I missing any variables, information, or have I made any math errors here?
Calculation readjustments:
Poplar trees rest for 10 hours per day regardless of anything, so really the optimum growing period should be 15*24/14 = around 25.71 days.
So in theory this should work, but only with max efficiency and hoping that nothing goes wrong.
40 wood for a Poplar sounds high. I think it's 30, but I could be wrong on that.
Heating / cooling might also be a factor in a lot of climates.
Other than that, it looks viable.
Can a Fueled Generator + Battery really keep a Sun lamp powered 24/7? I would test that personally (Edit - Just did, see below) before assuming it would, and basing calculations around it (as if it can't then everything that follows will need to be reconsidered).
Also keep in mind that yield is affected by the difficulty level. I just did a quick test and a Popular tree on Extreme yields 27 Wood, whereas at the opposite end on Peaceful it yields 39 Wood. Cutting and planting trees also takes a lot of time, so you'd likely need a lot of Pawn power to cut and plant 25 trees quick enough for it to be negligible factor. Otherwise that time would need to be accounted for in the calculations.
Overall I think it's an interesting idea, but one that fails quite badly due to opportunity cost (amongst other things). As if you are powering sun lamps to plant fields of trees just to generate power, then you are not using sun lamps to plant fields of something else, and using power generated for free* (*Wind/Solar are not strictly free, but using it here for simplicity). Pawns also have to use their time to service this system (refuelling, cutting , planting, hailing), which is time they can't use doing something else.
Plus what happens when the Fueled Generator/Battery combo breaks down? For arguments sake lets say you buy your components. If you use these sun lamp fields to grow food, cotton or drugs etc. then you can sell those things in order to raise the silver required to buy the components needed to repair the Solar/Wind/Batteries involved. But where is this silver coming from with the fields of tress? For arguments sakes, lets say this system is right on the verge of breakeven in terms of ROI (return on investment), if so then where is the excess required to pay for components?
Edit - Just did a quick test on whether a FG + Battery can power a Sun lamp.
Procedure
The test started at Day 1, Hour 5. I paused the game the moment "Resting" disappeared from the plant info panel and ordered the Sun Lamp to be turned on. And did the opposite the moment "Resting" appeared on the info panel.
Day 1, Hour 6 - Turned Sun Lamp on. Power in Battery was 694.
Day 1, Hour 19 - Turned Sun Lamp off. Power in Battery was 366.
Day 2, Hour 6, Turned Sun Lamp on. Power in Battery was 587.
So over the course of 1 Day, the battery lost 107 power. So this setup isn't self sufficient in relation to power (plus having to remember to order Pawns to flick Sun Lamps or Power Switch(es) on and off twice a day is a major pain in the backside. So regardless of the viability or not on paper, the hassle to the player of regularly flicking switches isn't something that can be ignored).
It would work, but if you're resigned to dedicating that much real estate to power, why not simply use a wind turbine with solars in the blank spots? Less micro, more power.
This thread is interesting for all ice sheet players, as it is too cold for any vegetation. I've thought about growing trees indoors, here's what I've come up with so far:
+using wood -> no. Simply because your turnaround is too big. 25 days growing time vs. 30 days for break even means that you get 16% out of it. For this heavy material investion, you gotta get more out of it. Heating will also eat your yield.
+trees are cold resistant (how far though?), no heating required during night. This makes it seem like an option to run this farm solely by two solar panels. During volcanic winter (light level is 80%, right?) you could power the sunlamp and six heaters. My current greenhouse uses 3, with -50°C outside.
+You will lose like three hours per day untill the panels have enough output for the sunlamp in any case. I recommend to use a time-of-day switch with a battery to automatically switch power on/off. Avoid using batteries and conduits.
+harvesting and replanting trees usually diffluences after a few harvests, the manpower need spreads out
PS: growing time is a bit more than 13 hours per day (starts at 6, ends a bit after 19)
fueled generator: 22 wood/day
all trees have the same fertility sensitivity (50%)
poplar tree: 30 wood, 15.05 days growth time (best tree)
source: ThingDefs_Plants\Plants_Wild_Temperate.xml
Quote from: Spdskatr on January 28, 2017, 07:16:43 AM
Calculation readjustments:
Poplar trees rest for 10 hours per day regardless of anything, so really the optimum growing period should be 15*24/14 = around 25.71 days.
So in theory this should work, but only with max efficiency and hoping that nothing goes wrong.
Ah yes, that does complicate things. Growth time is "total growth time", not "number of days it takes".
Quote from: Calahan on January 28, 2017, 07:42:29 AMAlso keep in mind that yield is affected by the difficulty level. I just did a quick test and a Popular tree on Extreme yields 27 Wood, whereas at the opposite end on Peaceful it yields 39 Wood. Cutting and planting trees also takes a lot of time, so you'd likely need a lot of Pawn power to cut and plant 25 trees quick enough for it to be negligible factor. Otherwise that time would need to be accounted for in the calculations.
Overall I think it's an interesting idea, but one that fails quite badly due to opportunity cost (amongst other things). As if you are powering sun lamps to plant fields of trees just to generate power, then you are not using sun lamps to plant fields of something else, and using power generated for free* (*Wind/Solar are not strictly free, but using it here for simplicity). Pawns also have to use their time to service this system (refuelling, cutting , planting, hailing), which is time they can't use doing something else.
...
So regardless of the viability or not on paper, the hassle to the player of regularly flicking switches isn't something that can be ignored).
I was testing this out on Peaceful, no wonder I was getting anomalously high values for wood yields! As a further twist though, it seems as though you can get Half of the max wood yield after a tree becomes harvestable at just 40% growth!
Yes, manually ordering flick-switching to save power is a huge pain in the butt. I wonder if there's a mod which generates orders for switch-flicking on and off at particular times. A sort of compromise that doesn't feel quite as cheaty as using the Time of Day switch.
Quote from: Sola on January 28, 2017, 07:54:13 AM
It would work, but if you're resigned to dedicating that much real estate to power, why not simply use a wind turbine with solars in the blank spots? Less micro, more power.
Yeah, this fails horrible when compared to
literally any other method to generate power, but It's an interesting demonstration that we CAN in fact violate conservation of energy! With no external inputs, it is theoretically possible to generate NET POWER from roofed soil!
I don't understand why time-of-day switches are cheaty. We can build spacecraft in this game, yet are unable to build a programable switch?
There's no indication that the conservation of energy is implemented. Using the energy of a solar panel, you can get fiery temperatures in a room the size of said panel. Why doesn't the whole planet heat up that far? I did some math with rice in hydroponics: With 20x hydroponics and a sunlamp (exactly 3kW power drain) you can get a whopping 124 chemfuel per day, enough to fire 5.66 fueled generators (if they would accept chemfuel). For the sake of ingame realism, let's say 5, while 3 of them are needed to power the greenhouse. This means a 40% efficiency. Now that the power consumption of the refinery comes to my mind, another fueled generator is needed, but all 24 hydroponics can now be sustained, pushing the brutto outpot to 6.8 generators. 4 vs 6 generators is still 33% efficiency (+550W).
PS: Making fueled generators accept chemfuel is one line of code. I'm not suggesting to do that, but showing that it is plausible.
rice stats taken from Plant_Cultivated_Farm.xml
Quote
Yes, manually ordering flick-switching to save power is a huge pain in the butt. I wonder if there's a mod which generates orders for switch-flicking on and off at particular times.
Yes:
https://github.com/Zhentar/AutoFlicker
I tried this. I didn't do the exact math but my experience was that my wood supply slowly dwindled over time. It was fairly close though, I think it could work if you had fertile soil and double thick walls/no external walls to save energy on heat. Even if it did work, I personally would still look for an alternative source of energy due to the chore of flipping the grow room's power on and off every day. I don't think it's really viable on the maps where it would help the most (sea ice, ice sheet) due to the lack of fertile soil, and wind turbines + batteries seems like a better choice in the cases where you would consider it.
This was my experience too. A colony has more power draws than just the sun lamp, and its margin of return is so slim that the whole thing is basically just an expensive way of slowly burning your wood. If you need wood in a treeless environment, you should harness the power of wind and sun more directly.
But the point of it isn't to be useful, it's to create an Over-Unity Device to violate the conservation of energy!
I think the tree cutting would be very, very slow and would cause your deadlines to slip. In the end you couldn't plant the new wave of trees on time.
I have been using the Auto-Flicker mod, and it works great! First thing in the morning, my pawns get out of bed and turn on all the sun lamps.
A single Generator/Battery pair can keep a Sunlamp on for about 85% normal growing time. Perfect efficiency would be to have more generators and switch them off when the sun lamps go off, but that's a bit more micro than I'm up for.
Encouraging my pawns to plant trees in high-density patterns is a challenge. Max density is 30 trees per lamp, but this requires a lot of micro to sustain. Left to their own devices, you'll get 25-26 trees per lamp, but with a little trimming of the growth-zone, you can get them to plant 27-28 trees on a regular basis.
I found a minor exploit where you can plant trees in a crop field and grow both (but no crop replant). If I plant a long-growing crop like Corn, then by the time its ready to harvest, the trees should be past the 40% threshold and yield useful wood from chopping. Set the field to "Plant: Corn", then after it is sown, switch them to "Plant: Cecropia Trees". ~35 tiles of crop are dug up and ~26 trees will be planted. After the trees reach 40% or the Corn is nearing maturity (whichever comes later), switch to "Plant: Corn" again. The trees will be chopped down, and the corn will be automatically re-sown as it is harvested. Once sown, switch back to trees. This will let you get double-use out of your fields, and is a simple way to manage the harvests, but it will slow down your tree planting cycle a bit. Also it's kind of an exploit.
In any case, Chopping the trees at 40% will greatly boost your yields. You get half the wood right then and there, and trees (like all crops) start with 5% growth. 0.5x wood in 0.35x time is better than 1x wood in 0.95x time. Then again, more frequent chopping and replanting will also add time back into the cycle, so it might not be quite as powerful. But I'm sure you can expect at least a 20% increase in yield by chopping at 40%-growth. And given the slim margins we are working with, that will have a significant impact on the viability of the project (as foolish as said project is).
You want to grow poplar, not cecropia. Although if poplar isn't native to the biome, teak can be better for the blight resistance
Have you tried using 30 1x1 growing zones? It's not that much micro once it's set up, since you can select mulitple growing zones.
Quote from: Zhentar on January 30, 2017, 01:49:19 AM
You want to grow poplar, not cecropia. Although if poplar isn't native to the biome, teak can be better for the blight resistance
Yeah, Cecropia only gives like 70% as much wood. Poplars all the way! (I'm in a tundra biome with a basically nonexistent growing season, and the native trees are Pine and Birch.)
I upped the difficulty to Rough and saw that the wood yield was down to 32 (or 16 per half-grown tree). Where I once contemplated building my base expansions out of wood, I am now occasionally running out of fuel. Fortunately there have always been enough 40+% trees to restart the system, but I'm not sure how I'm going to build up a surplus to expand the system. You have to burn a lot of wood before you get your first harvest.
30 1x1s would work if all I were doing was tree farming, but my colony has been living off of crops that I plant down before the crop of trees goes in. You can't sow crops next to trees, but if you plant the trees after the crops, they'll both grow to maturity. You have to clear the trees and halt their replanting in order to sow the food crops.
Quote from: Calahan on January 28, 2017, 07:42:29 AM
Day 1, Hour 6 - Turned Sun Lamp on. Power in Battery was 694.
Day 1, Hour 19 - Turned Sun Lamp off. Power in Battery was 366.
Day 2, Hour 6, Turned Sun Lamp on. Power in Battery was 587.
Concerning the energy loss to batteries which is 50% I believe, wouldn't it make the system more efficient to minimise the reliance on batteries as much as possible. I suggest multiple sunlamp farms with trees at different stages in growth in each, turn the lights off when a farm enters its resting phase, at this point, rather than diverting the excess power into a battery (losing 50% of that energy), divert it into a farm that is just coming out of the resting phase.
This might boost the efficiency slightl
I'll test this later.
Quote from: BranStarksLegs on January 30, 2017, 10:26:42 AM
I suggest multiple sunlamp farms with trees at different stages in growth in each, turn the lights off when a farm enters its resting phase, at this point, rather than diverting the excess power into a battery (losing 50% of that energy), divert it into a farm that is just coming out of the resting phase.
A plant's resting phase is determined by the time of day, and not by... ? (I'm afraid I do not know what you think it is determined by, and I won't guess). So all the trees will be resting at the exact same time. That being from roughly 19h to 6h the following day. So any sun lamp that is powered during this time is going to be wasted regardless of which sun lamp (farm) is getting the power.
Unless I'm badly misunderstanding what your idea is.
If I wanted to be perfectly optimal about it, I'd have my colonists flick the off switch on all of the Fueled Generators every night at 20:00, and on again every morning at 6:00 after they get up. However, that sounds like a giant pain in the ass. Turning the sun-lamps off every night at the right time was itself annoying enough that I had to download a mod to schedule those switch-flicks for me.
As it stands, the batteries are only charging for 10 hours, and at 50% efficiency this comes out to a loss of 5 Kilowatt-Hours out of a total 24kWH produced each day, which is still ~80% efficient overall.
...Granted, that is a major loss when considering the slim profit margins that a self-fueling tree farm operates on, but I'm not going to turn Rimworld into a "reflex clicking game" just for the sake of 4 wood/day.
...
In my current farm setup, I have 5 generators powering 4 Sun lamps with a couple batteries for stabilization and just enough extra power to run 3 heaters. It consumes an easy to calculate 100 wood/day, and I harvest 4*28=112 poplar trees every ~12 days which on Rough difficulty give ~15 wood each at 40% growth. Every 12 day cycle earns me ~1700 wood and costs 1200 wood in fuel. My net profit is ~ 500 wood, which comes out to just over +40 wood/day, or enough to power Two extra generators!!!! Yeah, I'm living the high life here.
The math of figuring out how much energy you actually have in a battery/sunlamp system is a little complicated but it all roughly simplifies to the following: Your night-time surplus must be 3x as large as your day-time deficit. (Charging happens for only 2/3 as much time and at 1/2 efficiency)
Each Sun-Lamp therefore requires 1200W power (battery buffered) to maintain, which comes out to 24 wood/day.
Here is a picture of my glorious fuel-farm and its double-cropping exploits. It is recovering from a fuel shortage caused by my failed attempt to expand the operation.
(http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/169284679330350427/A5E5474E7B72D4E0F45E067E4F881267E8278CE8/)
Here we can see Poplars growing happily among Potatoes and Devil-Strand. The trees in the potato-patch were planted randomly by the pawns, and the ones in the Devil-Strand were planted under my firm and direct guidance. The random-pattern has 24 trees in a plot, but the carefully-ordered patterns in other plots have 30 trees.
fueled generator: <fuelConsumptionRate>22.0</fuelConsumptionRate>
corrections:
Quote from: Hans Lemurson on January 30, 2017, 08:46:05 PM
[...]
In my current farm setup, I have 5 generators powering 4 Sun lamps with a couple batteries for stabilization and just enough extra power to run 3 heaters. It consumes an easy to calculate 110 wood/day, and I harvest 4*28=112 poplar trees every ~12 days which on Rough difficulty give ~15 wood each at 40% growth. Every 12 day cycle earns me ~1700 wood and costs 1320 wood in fuel. My net profit is ~ 380 wood, which comes out to just over +30 wood/day, or enough to power One extra generators!!!! Yeah, I'm living the high life here.
Note how this small adjustedment pretty much ruined your profit. (btw, i mentioned the fuel consumption rate before)
The math of your sunlamp depends a lot on your growing time. I run my sunlamps for 13 hours, because between 1900 and 2000 it's no full hour. Didn't redo your math here.
PS: The efficiency of your farm would be 16%, as you have 6 generators running, 5 of which are needed to operate the farm. Not counting potatoes.
22 wood per day?
Oh, I see, I misread "3 days, 9 hours" as 3.75 days. I really liked that number too, since it made everything clean multiples.
This does explain why my wood surplus has been rather smaller than I had predicted. Turns out I can't actually run both extra generators indefinitely at the same time. Not without more tree plots. I am going to need to get my new farms operational, but that requires that I invest ~700 wood in its generators before I can harvest the crop. Actually since it's on fertile soil, maybe it will only cost ~500 wood.
Have you tried using one fueled generator for the heating and sunlamps on an independent circuit to power the sunlamps? You won't lose much growing time and get big savings on wood investment. Material cost is also less.
PS: Tree (all kinds) have a soil fertility sensitivity of 50%
Quote from: Thyme on February 01, 2017, 04:02:48 AM
Have you tried using one fueled generator for the heating and sunlamps on an independent circuit to power the sunlamps? You won't lose much growing time and get big savings on wood investment. Material cost is also less.
PS: Tree (all kinds) have a soil fertility sensitivity of 50%
Keeping the heaters on a separate grid isn't necessary. Constant loads just means that the batteries are never involved and therefore cause no efficiency problems.
...Or do you mean have the Sun-Lamps on a grid where I can just manually shut down all the generators at night?
In any case, I got my fertile-soil tree farm up and running and found to my dismay (as you just pointed out) that my Poplars were only getting a +20% growth bonus, not +40%. Profit margins just got a little thinner, but they will still be better than my normal-soil farm even though I'm using 3 generators for 2 Sunlamps instead of 5 for 4.
...No, wait, they will be identical. :/
Oh, forgot to insert the "independent circuit powered by solar". You wouldn't even have to use a switch (1 solar = 1700W).
Powering my tree-farms with something other than their own wood?!!! :o HERESY.
just a thought. It kind of flies in the CONCEPT of the challenge, but might deliver a better result.
Due to the way heat and unroofed mechanics work, it would be possible to set up an outdoor tree farm even with no "growing season."
build a 12x11 room (optionally, add an extra recessed 2x2 area in it for the generator, since they give heat). set up 25 individual 1x1 growing zones for trees. Set those 25 squares ONLY to be unroofed. Build your fueled generator and however many heaters you need in order to keep the room warmed enough for growing. Since there are only 25 unroofed squares out of 132 (or 136) there will be heat loss, but it won't be locked to the outdoor temp. You can now save 1600 power on a sunlamp, since you get natural light. Optionally, make the room as long as necessary to optimize the heat....1 generator can power 5 heaters AND gives off heat on it's own.
Quote from: Limdood on February 02, 2017, 11:01:15 AM
just a thought. It kind of flies in the CONCEPT of the challenge, but might deliver a better result.
Due to the way heat and unroofed mechanics work, it would be possible to set up an outdoor tree farm even with no "growing season."
build a 12x11 room (optionally, add an extra recessed 2x2 area in it for the generator, since they give heat). set up 25 individual 1x1 growing zones for trees. Set those 25 squares ONLY to be unroofed. Build your fueled generator and however many heaters you need in order to keep the room warmed enough for growing. Since there are only 25 unroofed squares out of 132 (or 136) there will be heat loss, but it won't be locked to the outdoor temp. You can now save 1600 power on a sunlamp, since you get natural light. Optionally, make the room as long as necessary to optimize the heat....1 generator can power 5 heaters AND gives off heat on it's own.
Hmm...I had heard that small holes in the roof didn't lock you to outside temp, and had considered experimenting with this. I wasn't sure about the massive heating bill it would entail, but given that you can power 6-7 Heaters continuously for the same Power cost as a "battery-buffered off-at-night Sun lamp", it may just be comparable.
It's a different sort of challenge than generating energy from a closed-loop system, but it presents its own unique puzzles and opportunities. It also makes me wonder about putting hydroponic tables beneath open sky-lights for farming in all sort of hostile environments. Depending on the temperatures being dealt with, it could be more energy efficient than sun-lamps, but I wonder whether it could work for gravel-farms on polar ice-sheets or if the heating costs would simply be too extreme.
It would be quite the achievement to create an all wood-powered base in the frozen north, even if it's not self-illuminating. I wonder how much wood would be required to boot-strap your operation. I will also need to study the wood efficiency of other heat sources like torches and campfires. I don't think it will be as powerful as a Fueled Generator + 5-6 Heaters, but this can certainly be tested.
I can confirm you can grow potatoes using both campfires and steam vents for heat on ice sheet.
Based on experimentation with tribal ice sheet starts on extreme difficulty, it's not realistic to do so sustainably. However they plants WILL grow using the partial roof trick. The problem is less heating cost, and more actually covering so much space for growing such a paltry amount of product. Still, it's your only real farming option until you get hydroponics + probably geothermal (which can sustain 23 basins + sunlamp + 2 heaters or if that isn't necessary 1 heater and all 24 basins you can get in sunlamp range).
Hydroponic should work similarly, except you will need ~100 tile room to open enough space to use 6 hydroponics basins. It saves on power but in terms of building materials and space it isn't trivial.
Potatoes are good, but can you grow trees fast enough to refuel the fires?
Given that gravel only appears in thin strips around the rocky outcrops, walling them in involves the construction of quite the perimeter. Expensive in both materials, time, and heat-loss. Do you know how much heat you lose from exposed rock walls?
the problem is that your system isn't closed. Trees gain energy from soil and water as well as light, neither of which is simulated in Rimworld. That means as a simulation, you can't really have a completely "closed circuit" because it requires outside input, such as soil (since soil, rich soil, and gravel would all give vastly different outcomes to the experiment).
Soil and water provide nutritients, but no energy. That comes solely from the sun.
Well, my tribe just starved to death on an ice sheet waiting for potatoes to grow. I underestimated how cold rooms get and how much the heat is diffused when you make them large.
I think I need to do some serious research into how Heat works in this game.
...
Ok, some important observations:
-Holes in the roof drain a LOT of heat! Crazy, huh.
-Insulation helps some, but holes have the biggest impact. Double-walling buys you a couple extra holes.
-Double-walling increases the temperature differential of a given heat source by 50%. This is comparable to doubling the heat sources.
-Triple-walling gives no benefit over double-walling
-Campfires create a max room temperature of 28C, torches at 23C
-Campfires burn 10 wood per day, torches burn 2.2 wood/day
-It takes 6 torches to equal the heat output of 1 campfire (campfires win)
-1 Fueled Generator powering 5 Heaters generates over 2x as much heat as 2 campfires, for roughly the same wood/day. Electricity FTW!!!
Skylit wood-heated arctic tree farms seem do-able, but I don't think campfires are up to the task.
One major challenge with skylight farms is that the temperature is near its lowest when the daylight begins and the plants wake up, so you stand to miss out on a lot of growing-time if your heat source can't handle the lows.
I just got my first harvest of tundra grown wood! Picture below. My attempt at heating only during growing hours didn't work, my trees disappeared. A fellow player in Phi suggested as cause that a some of the trees die when frost hits. Doing so every night is the road to financial ruin ...
So, I resorted to permanent heating and connected the sunlamp via a time-of-day switch to the main grid. The solar panels were added to take some of the load from the sunlamps (got more greenhouses). Powering the sunlamp directly with solar panels would work, but is suboptimal. Solar panels have 900W at 0600 (start later) and are close to 0W at 1900 (end way too early). Batteries would have helped, but I like to avoid Zzzt!.
Using a solar panel to cover most of the sunlamps drain, another power source combined with a battery to sustain the heating is definitely more resource friendly and efficient than Hans' approach with fueled generators. Using the sunlamp 24/7 is not recommended, the reasons are obvious. A switch shouldn't be neccessary for that if you make two independent circuits.
Other notable things to mention:
+I looked for an optimal spot with Zhentars sunlamp designator. I think that's a part of his vanilla tweaks. It sums the fertility of all tiles that would be covered by a sunlamp if you where building one where your mouse is. I looked for the maximum number of trees afterwards. Great tool for Ice Sheets!
+If you like it more vanilla friendly, Zhentar has a switch that assigns itself automatically for flicking in the morning/evening.
+The third heater is currently a backup. Climate cycle was currently at peak temperatures with -10°C summer, but will go to -50/70°C summer/winter soon. Might need a fourth.
+I placed 18 growing zones to work around possibly stupid growers ;)
[attachment deleted by admin due to age]
Quote from: Thyme on February 06, 2017, 02:40:06 AMUsing a solar panel to cover most of the sunlamps drain, another power source combined with a battery to sustain the heating is definitely more resource friendly and efficient than Hans' approach with fueled generators. Using the sunlamp 24/7 is not recommended, the reasons are obvious. A switch shouldn't be neccessary for that if you make two independent circuits.
I think you're missing the point. My question was not "What's the best way to grow wood in woodless lands?", it was
"Is it theoretically possible to extract net energy from a closed system?" And the answer turned out to be yes.
Only a total fool would try to power their Sun-Lamps with the very wood they are growing. ;)
I answered that question in post #7 already, rice in hydros is much more efficient than wood. Corn on rich soil should top even that.