| Simple Solar Boiler | |
|---|---|
| Mod | GregTech 5 |
| Type | Tile entity |
| Tooltip text | Steam Power by the Sun |
| Energy | |
| Steam storage | 16000 L |
| Steam production | 6 L/t |
The Simple Solar Boiler is a machine added by GregTech 5. It is a low-tech boiler that produces Steam from sunlight. While heated, the Solar Boiler has the same steam output as the Small Coal Boiler of 150L Steam per 25 Ticks, or 6L/t overall.
Recipe[]
Usage[]
The Simple Solar Boiler uses the same heating and cooling math as the Small Coal Boiler, however its "fuel" is more complicated.
Every 256 ticks, the boiler checks to see if it can see the sun. If it can, it gives itself 8 points of fuel. During the (about) 5 seconds (8x12=96 ticks) it is active from those 8 points of fuel, its heat increases by 6 (+8-2). During the following 8 seconds, it loses 3.25 heat (-1 per 45 ticks), for a net change of ~2.75 heat per 13 seconds of daylight, or roughly 0.21 degrees per second. It therefore takes 6.3 minutes for a cold Solar Boiler to start producing Steam (temperature=20 to temperature>=100). As a Minecraft day lasts only 10 minutes, if you do not sleep, a Solar Boiler will only produce Steam for about 5.5 minutes out of every 20-minute full day (3.7 minutes during the day, 1.8 minutes cooling after nightfall). So in order to make Solar Boilers practical, constant exploitation the 'sleep resets time to 6am' feature of beds is necessary.
It takes 38 minutes of continuous sunlight for a Solar Boiler to reach maximum temperature (500). Unlike the other boilers, maximum temperature has no meaning at all to the Simple Solar Boiler.
The boiler can hold 16,000 Liters of steam and 16,000 Liters of water. As long as its temperature is above 100, every 25 ticks it will consume 1 Liter of water and produce 150 Liters of steam, equivalent to 6 mB/t of steam. Temperatures above 100 do not affect steam production. The Boiler will attempt to output steam from all of its sides except the bottom. However, it will accept water piped in from below, allowing water pipes to be safely placed below a line of boilers. If the steam tank fills, 1/4th of its capacity will be discarded and a smoke particle and hiss sound effect will be produced as an alert.
Water can be added to the boiler by right clicking on the machine with water buckets, or by placing any sort of cell with water in the water input slot in the GUI. Like all GregTech machines, it will give the empty cell back. If the temperature is above 100 and the boiler runs out of water, adding water will cause an explosion, so wait for it to cool off first.
Changes in Unofficial[]
In GregTech 5 Unofficial version 5.09.16, a change was made to the Simple Solar Boiler. As the Boiler is left active and supply with normal Water instead of Distilled Water, it will slowly calcify, reducing its Steam output. Calcification starts to take effect after 10,000 Steam production cycles (250,000 ticks, 208 minutes 20 seconds, just under 3.5 hours), after which time Steam output decreases by 1L every 100 production cycles, down to a minimum of 50L per 25 ticks (1/3 normal output) after another 208 minutes and 20 seconds. This timer and its effects are reset if the Boiler is picked up and re-placed (it is not stored in the item). The purpose of this change was to force some manual interaction with the low-tech single-block boilers, and not just let them run indefinitely through automation.
Note that time that the Boiler spends at temperatures below 100 (not producing Steam) do not count towards calcification. In practice, this means that because (as noted above) a Solar Boiler operates for 5.5 minutes out of every 20 minute day, with no sleeping a Solar Boiler will operate on a server for about 12 hours before it starts losing output to calcification.