Solar Tower
Introduction
Ingame Tooltip:
Solar Tower 2062:863
Contributing Green Energy towards the future
Surround with rings of Solar Reflectors
The Reflectors increase the internal heat value of the Tower (see below for formula)
Each Reflector ring increases tier, the first ring is required for the Tower to work
Input: Solar Salt (Cold)
Output: Solar Salt (Hot)
Every cycle (10 seconds), heat increases and all the Cold Solar Salt is heated
Converting Cold to Hot Solar Salt reduces heat, equal to the amount converted
This conversion only happens if heat >= 30000 and controller efficiency = 100%
If there's more Cold Salt than heat, all the heat is used up and returns to 0
The heat increase is most efficient at exactly half of maximum heat
Minimum efficiency at 0 or 100000 heat, maximum efficiency at 50000
Heat Efficiency formula: (:currentHeat - 50000: ^ 0.8 + 7000) / 7000
Heat gain per cycle: numberHeaters × heatEfficiency × (10 + bonus)
Bonus: 1 ring = +1, 2 rings = +2, 3 rings = +4, 4 rings = +8, 5 rings = +16
Total number of reflectors based on how many rings are built:
1 ring = 36, 2 rings = 88, 3 rings = 156, 4 rings = 240, 5 rings = 340
Construction
To construct the solar tower you will need a large flat area for the base and the rings. The usage of the Multiblock structure hologram projector is advised as the player can sneak right click on the controller block to autoplace the blocks into the world. Holding more then one Hologram projector in a stack can affect the tier of placement allowing the player to place the rings as well.
Once placed the player then needs to right click with the soft mallet to enable the multiblock.
Power Generation
The solar tower can provide a maximum of 8840 heat per 10 seconds which is the cycle rate of the solar tower. To obtain this heat rate the internal heat must be kept at a steady 50,000 with five rings of solar reflectors. The heat is converted into hot salt at a rate of 1:1 and then the hot salt can be converted into super heated steam at a rate of 1:1,000.
This would result in a maximum output of 42,200 super heated steam a tick. (Math ahead: 8840 heat / 10 seconds to 884 heat per second / 20 ticks for 44.2 heat per tick then times by 1000 for 42,200 super heated steam.
Usage
Inserting solar salt into the input hatch will convert into hot salt which can be converted into super heated steam and return back the cold salt to be reused into the solar tower.
The hot salt can be used in either the Thermal boilers at a consumption maximum rate of 100 per second or in the large heat exchanger at a consumption maximum rate of 320 per second.
A max tier solar can output enough solar salt for 8.84 thermal boilers or 2.62 Large heat exchangers with both outputing the same amount of super heated steam.
The large heat exchangers are cheaper to produce then the Thermal boilers but do not work well with fractional amounts so at best the solar tower will keep two of them at full efficiency at all times.