Power

In Survival Mode, the engineer’s suit Life Support and all grids (ships, stations, rovers) with functional blocks require power to function.

In Creative Mode, power producing blocks have infinite charge, but still limited throughput. If a grid exceeds its reactor's/battery's power capacity, you still need to build several power producing blocks.

All touching blocks carry electricity, there are no cables to put down.

Comparison

How do I choose a power source? Each source has benefits and disadvantages regarding mobility, recharge time, effectiveness, location, and costs. A basic rule of thumb is, consider your the environment and what is most practical there, before you start building.

Power source comparison

	Efficiency	Reliability	Grid	Location	Source	Recharge time	Cost	Weight	Size
Reactor	strong	predictable	mobile and station	space, any planet	Uranium fuel is rare and slow to refine	fast	expensive	heavy	Compact
Wind Turbine	good	unreliable	station only	atmospheric planets only	must have wind	medium	cheap	light	tall, needs air gaps
Solar Panel	weak	unreliable	mobile and station	space, any planet	must have direct sunlight	medium	cheap	light	large surface area
Hydrogen Engine	good	predictable	mobile and station	space, any planet	explosive hydrogen; dependency on bulky but common ice and O2/H2 Generator	fast	medium	medium	voluminous tanks
Prototech Fusion Reactor	strong	predictable	mobile and station	space, any planet	explosive hydrogen; dependency on bulky but common ice and O2/H2 Generator	fast	expensive	heavy	voluminous tanks
Battery	good	predictable	mobile and station	space, any planet	Limited initial charge, dependency on other power sources to recharge	slow	cheap	heavy	compact

Why do I care?

Don't take lack of power lightly:

• Without power to your gyroscopes, it will be very hard to do a controlled soft landing!
• Without powered thrusters, you will drift and you won't be able to slow down and brake your velocity!
• Without power, conveyors don’t work -- which also prevents hydrogen from being supplied to hydrogen engines and thrusters!
• Without power, your environmental control (air vents, doors, lights, and artificial gravity) will fail!
• Multiplayer servers delete unpowered grids, assuming they are floating debris.
• Life support (recharging your suit) of course also requires power.

How to recharge a space suit

Engineers recharge their suit’s power by sitting in any seat (which includes couch, toilet, bed) or cockpit on a powered grid, or by interacting with a Survival Kit, Cryo Chamber, or Medical Room.

What's my power usage?

The HUD element marked with a lightning bolt is your current power usage, not the remaining charge.

While seated in a grid, your total power usage is shown in the bottom-right of the HUD in percent in the powerbar marked with a lightning bolt.

• If the powerbar is empty, you are not exerting the ship (e.g. because it is docked or powered down).
• If the powerbar always shows low values even at high exertion, you can remove some batteries/reactors and save weight.
• If the powerbar fluctuates below 99%, you have just enough power for what you are doing, which is good.
• If the powerbar fills up to 100% and turns red, your ship lacks the power to perform at the requested level: If this happens regularly, add another battery.

Calculating You Power Production Needs

1. Determine the total amount of power that your grid will need.
2. Calculate the amount of fuel or power you will need from your power producing blocks.

Determine Total Amount of Power Needed

Determine the total amount of power that your grid is utilizing by going to the control panel:

• Selecting your power production block(s) and looking at the current output.
• You may want to add a buffer for increased power production based off your needs.

Example: If your large grid is currently using 13 MW of power and your power producers can produce 14.5 MW using a  Small Reactor, you may want to add an additional battery, Hydrogen Engine, or other power producers to handle an increased load.

Calculate Fuel Consumption

The easiest way to calculate fuel consumption for power producers is to convert everything into megawatt hours (MWh). 1 MWh means that your power producers are consistently outputting 1 MW for an hour.

This is especially important for power generating blocks that consume fuel such as the  Hydrogen Engine,  Small Reactor,  Large Reactor, or  Prototech Fusion Reactor.

If the Output power is given in MW, assume that is MW per second. To convert to MWh take the MW and multiply it by the number of seconds in an hour.

Example: Our Large Grid is running at 7.4 MW consistently. How much hydrogen do we need to run it for the next 10 hours at this level? We are only using  Hydrogen Engine for power.

First, let's look at how much hydrogen is needed to produce 1 MWh with a hydrogen engine. From there, we can calculate the amount of hydrogen and engines we will need to run our grid.

If a Large Grid hydrogen Engine consumes 500 L/s of hydrogen to produce 5 MW, then it will consume 100 L/s to produce 1 MW. To find out how much hydrogen we need to sustain our base, we need to figure out how much hydrogen is needed to produce 1 MWh.

To find how many seconds are in 1 hour: $1hour\Rightarrow 60\frac{seconds}{minute}\bullet 60\frac{minutes}{hour}=3,600\frac{seconds}{hr}$

Now multiply the seconds per hour by the fuel consumed per second. In our example of 1MWh for a hydrogen engine, it would be:

$3,600\frac{seconds}{hr}\bullet 100\frac{\text{L of hydrogen}}{\text{MW per second}}=360,000\frac{\text{L of hydrogen}}{MWh}$

To produce 1 MWh with a  Hydrogen Engine, we would need 360,000 L of hydrogen.

From here you take the MW your base is consuming and multiply it by the fuel consumption calculation. Since our grid is running at 7.4 MW and we want to run it for 10 hr we will need:

$360,000\frac{\text{L of hydrogen}}{MWh}\bullet 10hr\bullet 7.4MW=26,640,000\text{ L of hydrogen}$

So we would need 26,640,000 L of hydrogen to run our base at 7.4 MW consitently for 10 hr. Since Large Grid Hydrogen Engines have a maximum output of 5 MW, we would need two hydrogen engines.

How long will my power last?

When logging off a multiplayer server tou want an estimate how long your ships or base's power will last before it will fall victim to server cleanup rules for unpowered grids.

Above the power usage in the HUD, you can also see your power remaining in minutes based on that you continue doing what you are doing right now.

• While docked or coasting, the HUD will show the maximum time remaining.
• While actively manoeuvering or running all factories etc., it will show the minimum time remaining.

How to not lose unpowered grids

The game can mistake unpowered grids (e.g. drones and rovers that ran out of batteries) for debris, which prompts the automatic Trash Removal to delete them.

• In Singleplayer, configure or suspend this feature on the Admin Screen.
• In Multiplayer, expect Trash Removal to be the default. Before logging off, set the batteries to Auto, add some type of renewable energy to your grids, and shut down all power-hungry non-essentials such as factories.

Related Mods

If you are willing and able to run script mods, Adriano's Electric Network Info - Touch App can display current power production and consumption on an LCD in great detail.