Large fuel cells for colonies

[Strawberry]

While you can spend energy to break apart molecules, you can also gain energy by putting them back together. Fuel cells for colonies would open up a new avenue for energy storage and energy transportation. Have a colony on the poles of Mun that will be plunged into darkness for a month? Send up hydrogen and oxygen rovers so they can borrow energy from your colony in sunlight. Have no lithium but want to save up energy anyways, fuel cells would open up an avenue to store energy using easily available materials, albeit in an inefficient manner.

These large fuel cells would be able to run any reaction your refineries can do in reverse. You can run hydrogen and oxygen on your fuel cell for a relatively efficient reaction, just at the cost of taking up lots of space. Aluminum and oxygen would be highly volume efficient, making it easy to store, it just would come at the cost of lower efficencies. Metallic hydrogen would be insanely mass and volume efficent, but poor thermodynamic efficiency, making it best for long distance power transmission such as those between different planets.

[Pthigrivi]

[AtomicTech]

[The Aziz]

Why bother with fuel cells when you have fusion reactors and geothermal energy generators?

 

[GoldForest]

1 hour ago, The Aziz said:

Why bother with fuel cells when you have fusion reactors and geothermal energy generators? 

 

I can see fuel cells being handy for small mining outposts that would more than likely be temporary until the resources dried up. They would be cheap and not worth a lot, so once you abandon the base, it wouldn't be that much of a loss if you can't tear it down. 

[Pthigrivi]

3 hours ago, GoldForest said:

I can see fuel cells being handy for small mining outposts that would more than likely be temporary until the resources dried up. They would be cheap and not worth a lot, so once you abandon the base, it wouldn't be that much of a loss if you can't tear it down. 

Or just anywhere you have easy local access to volatile chemical fuels but its not as easy to ship in nuclear fuels, especially in the mid-game Im guessing. Use what you mine for power and export or store the excess. 

[Nazalassa]

Would be nice if those fuel cells could produce more energy than spent to mine the ore and process it into fuel.

[AtomicTech]

5 hours ago, The Aziz said:

Why bother with fuel cells when you have fusion reactors and geothermal energy generators?

 

Larger variety of power sources that'll create energy security.

[Strawberry]

9 hours ago, The Aziz said:

Why bother with fuel cells when you have fusion reactors and geothermal energy generators?

Fusion reactors are expensive and also late game, and geothermal generators usage is limited based on your location. Not to mention, these fuel cells could be used as energy storage as a battery alternative as well, unlike those power sources. 

4 hours ago, Nazalassa said:

Would be nice if those fuel cells could produce more energy than spent to mine the ore and process it into fuel.

I feel like this kind of ruins the point of what would make this part interesting alongside violating thermodynamics and being broken. Unlike most reactors its not a "true" power generator, its a power transporter that takes energy from elsewhere to generate its own power. If it could become a perpetual energy generator, then it now ruins the downside of it requiring a supply chain, would make power scarce areas no longer power scarce, and just not make any sense.

[Drakenred65]

There’s some evidence geothermal may be possible on mars. That said, fuel  cell using stored Hydrogen is slightly problematic, most hydrogen extractors waste energy as heat, as do fuel cells, also storing hydrogen is problematic, and trasporing it would be more so. Granted it’s probably less lossy than power  transmission lines.

[Pthigrivi]

30 minutes ago, [email protected] said:

There’s some evidence geothermal may be possible on mars. That said, fuel  cell using stored Hydrogen is slightly problematic, most hydrogen extractors waste energy as heat, as do fuel cells, also storing hydrogen is problematic, and trasporing it would be more so. Granted it’s probably less lossy than power  transmission lines.

But wait! There’s more! 
 

 

[Drakenred65]

Oh there’s lots of wonderful ideas for power storage and generation, various “gravity dams”, flywheels ( the moon is mostly a natural vacuum + lower friction from gravity meaning less loss from friction) and so on.

[mattinoz]

21 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

But wait! There’s more! 
 

 

Similar to a sand storage battery on earth. 

I'd assume with radiators out the the inky blackness of space and ground coupling to large thermal mass. there would be someway to have a heat engine making power all night at least.

[Bej Kerman]

On 12/14/2022 at 4:23 PM, Nazalassa said:

Would be nice if those fuel cells could produce more energy than spent to mine the ore and process it into fuel.

An excellent suggestion, with just two minor drawbacks. One, this doesn't obey the laws of thermodynamics, and two, this doesn't obey the laws of thermodynamics.

[Catto]

Why don't we just harvest the sun

[GoldForest]

55 minutes ago, Catto said:

Why don't we just harvest the sun

Imagine KSP 2 if they allowed Dyson Spheres or Dyson Swarms.

[Bej Kerman]

9 minutes ago, GoldForest said:

Imagine KSP 2 if they allowed Dyson Spheres or Dyson Swarms.

Dyson swarms, probably not considered for the stock game but it's low tech enough that a mod could do it stockalike. Really all you need is a resource-heavy planet near the central star, a launch system on the surface to lighten payloads, and a lot of mining equipment. However, Dyson spheres are just too advanced for the game, and would fit into the game just as well as planet creation and intergalactic travel. That's besides the challenge of simulating the physics of a megastructure bigger than a space elevator.

Edited December 16, 2022 by Bej Kerman

[GoldForest]

5 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Dyson swarms, probably not considered for the stock game but it's low tech enough that a mod could do it stockalike. Really all you need is a resource-heavy planet near the central star, a launch system on the surface to lighten payloads, and a lot of mining equipment. However, Dyson spheres are just too advanced for the game, and would fit into the game just as well as planet creation and intergalactic travel. That's besides the challenge of simulating the physics of a megastructure bigger than a space elevator.

I wonder if the new planet system will allow for hollow planets, with some modding effort involved of course. A dyson spehere planet like from Halo 4 would be interesting to explore imo. 

[Vl3d]

Reality check - we don't even have weather.

[Drakenred65]

To be fair….

 

Reality check. We don’t even have KSP 2 yet … 

 

[Stevex]

For short term energy storage (up to a week) one of the most efficient and on an alien planet easiest to make using local resources is a very large flywheel connected to a motor/generator. Excess power from solar, wind and nuclear power plants would be fed into the flywheel speeding it up. When required power can be taken out.

On Mars with a thin atmosphere there would be little drag on the flywheel. The flywheel does not need to spin fast, as long as it is heavy enough. It should be reasonably easy to make a balanced flywheel using local rock of maybe several thousand tonnes.

 

Edited December 17, 2022 by Stevex

[JadeOfMaar]

On 12/14/2022 at 6:36 AM, The Aziz said:

Why bother with fuel cells when you have fusion reactors and geothermal energy generators?

If you're near to a star, my friend Concentrated Solar would like to have a word with you. As some folks point out, fusion is late-game and you can't count on something that's not available yet IRL or available for a hot minute in-game. Geothermal is great when: the celestial body gets sufficient insolation; it gets enough tidal force from a companion body to keep its mantle churning; it's geologically active by itself despite being far from its star...But it's going to be a challenge or unviable on what's likely majority dead worlds of ice and frosted rock.

On 12/16/2022 at 3:14 AM, Bej Kerman said:

Dyson swarms, probably not considered for the stock game but it's low tech enough that a mod could do it stockalike. Really all you need is a resource-heavy planet near the central star, a launch system on the surface to lighten payloads, and a lot of mining equipment. However, Dyson spheres are just too advanced for the game, and would fit into the game just as well as planet creation and intergalactic travel. That's besides the challenge of simulating the physics of a megastructure bigger than a space elevator.

Dyson swarms would also be great. KSP2 would need to have a UI and a bit of a mini-game for setting up the swarm and partitioning the total collected energy to be beamed to wherever that needs whatever amount of it. There's a standalone beamed power mod right now which paractically allows this, I think, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem to remake and expand it for the new game.

[Strawberry]

We have orbital colonies, dont know why you couldnt make a solar colony and use that for your power hungry needs. Also if you dont want to deal with logistics you could just coat the innermost planet in solar panels. I dont see why we would need special mechanics for dyson swarms as 1. dyson swarms high power output would either mean they're massively overkill, or they make all other power sources invalid which seems bad and 2. There are ways to harvest lots of solar power that are a lot more holistic with the rest of the game.

[Bej Kerman]

2 hours ago, Strawberry said:

We have orbital colonies, dont know why you couldnt make a solar colony and use that for your power hungry needs.

What if we need power on the surface of a planet?

[Strawberry]

2 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

What if we need power on the surface of a planet?

Beam power from your solar colony/install solar panels on your colony. If a planetary colony has poor energy availability to process your raw goods, you can fly it elsewhere and process it there.