Guides:Early Power

Early Power explanation
In the beginning your wind turbines will give you from 1.4 to 1.6 MW of power which is enough to run your 4 electrolysers and finish your first quests. This is free power so make sure you do place them all.

When you aren't handcrafting anything else, forage for cellulose fiber. This will give you another ~1 MW of power.

While you should absolutely use the beginning wind turbines you start with, do not make more. Their simplicity may be alluring but these are a very weak return for the iron/steel invested. As soon as you need power beyond what your starting windmill farm can provide, proceed to green algae.

Green Algae Farm First steps
You begin with an early game recipe Green algae I which produces both green and brown algae from water. This is fantastic starting out as it's simple to set up. However make sure that the brown algae doesn't back up! Convert the green algae to cellulose fibre to make it burnable. Then convert the fibre to Wood pellets and then to Wood bricks to increase the fuel value.

Once you research Wood processing, put your wood bricks into a furnace to get charcoal, further increasing the net fuel value.

Improving power production with Green Algae Processing
The next power production milestone is researching Green algae processing. This unlocks the Green algae II recipe. While it is more complicated to set up it is definitely worth it! It's much faster and only produces Green algae so it won't back up with brown algae. "Tip: Make sure to prioritize charcoal being made into Carbon dioxide first, before sending the remainder off to be burnt or used elsewhere."

Further improving power production with solid fuel
At green science, you will be able to get even more value from your charcoal production. Look for a recipe that allows Solid fuel from Charcoal + Hydrogen. Early game Electrolysers produce lots of Hydrogen that is usually being voided, and this will greatly improve the fuel value of our charcoal. Alternatively, charcoal can very simply be turned into Charcoal pellets for a quick fuel value boost. Do keep a supply line of just charcoal as it's needed for some recipes.

Carbon is used in making circuits as well as some smelting recipes. However you will lose fuel value by making it so it's not a good option for power production.

Don't grow trees for power. Trees are a fantastic source of wood once you get the recipe to make wooden boards out of the trees, replacing the paper route. Wood can be burned, but isn't a great path to pursue just for power potential.

Fuel Oil Power
Farming requires a bit of investment in agriculture tech (which means finding and sacrificing at least one garden), but likely by the time you've reached green science you've already put a few in a box. For oil power you'll need to research:


 * Nutrient extraction
 * Fluid burning boiler 1
 * At least one of the farming techs:
 * Desert farming 1
 * Swamp farming 1
 * Temperate farming 1

Biafran is a good first choice. It makes beans which for early recipe gives a good amount of nutrient pulp. To get a Binafran farm going, you'll need sand and saline water. These are outputs from the Washing chain. You'll need at least 6 washing plants, more to fine tune the ratios.


 * Binafran goes into a Seed extractor to make Binafran seeds
 * Spare Biafran goes in a Bio processor to make Beans
 * Beans go in a Nutrient extractor to make Nutrient pulp
 * Nutrient pulp goes in an Gas refinery to make Fuel oil and Water
 * Water can be disposed of in a Clarifier or recycled. Just don't let it back up!
 * Enjoy the power rich fuel oil

Fluid burning boilers makes 90/s of 315 °C steam. To consume this, each Fluid burning boiler needs 3x Steam engine 2.

All burnable fluids have their fuel value in the tooltip. Fuel value is per unit, so 100 fuel oil is 100MJ.


 * Crude oil 0.5MJ
 * Fuel oil 1MJ
 * Hydrazine gas 0.34MJ
 * Liquid fuel 1MJ
 * Methane 0.5MJ
 * Naphtha 0.5MJ

Alternatively, liquid fuels can be burnt in Fluid burning heat sources. While expensive to set up, is is more efficient as the heat sources have a 12.5% neighbour bonus. Fuel will flow from one heat source into the next similar to how boilers share water, so you can make a small grid of them and just attach fuel to any one of them.