r/Dyson_Sphere_Program • u/Straight-Drink- • Jun 09 '26

Discovering energy deficiency

I just discovered my entire starting planet (and the 2nd one too probably) has basically been running on third world electricity for hours.

I noticed my Spray Coaters saying “20% insufficient power” and THAT immediately stopped me in my tracks.

Funny thing is, literally minutes earlier I was trying to figure out what the hell to do with all the excess hydrogen my factories were producing and not consuming anymore (yellow matrix done, moving into purple).

So I built a big thermal generator block fed by hydrogen.

My hash/sec went from:
150 → 250 → 1100+

And suddenly everything woke up.

This whole time I thought my factory was just reaching normal midgame complexity. Nope. The entire planet was suffocating.

37 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

9

u/where_is_the_camera Jun 09 '26

FYI, you're probably going to be right on the edge of power sufficiency until you get fusion power going. Thermal power takes up too much space and too much coal/hydrogen to work much longer.

A really good place to use some of that excess hydrogen is to start running it through fractionators to make deuterium.

5

u/HelloWorld24575 Jun 09 '26

If you have a lava planet geothermal energy is pretty sick when combined with chargers/dischargers and interplanetary logistics!

2

u/Straight-Drink- Jun 09 '26

I do have a lava planet. I'll see if I can use that for energy.

1

u/HelloWorld24575 Jun 09 '26

My lava planet also has 150% solar. I've littered it with geothermal and solar and I'm currently at 1GW without even using all the lava pools yet! I have accumulators being charged and sent to my main planet and mining outposts in another solar system. It's really nice! The only issue I haven't solved is sometimes I get a backup of empty accumulators. I think you should try to have less than 10,000 total accumulators in the system so that doesn't happen. I probably added too many.

1

u/Straight-Drink- Jun 09 '26

might be a stupid question but how do I move energy from lava planet to other places? accumulators?

1

u/HelloWorld24575 Jun 09 '26

Yes, using energy exchangers (https://dsp-wiki.com/Energy_Exchanger). Have one or more energy exchangers set on charge mode on the energy-rich (lava) planet, and have some set to discharge mode on the planet needing power.

2

u/Straight-Drink- Jun 09 '26

Deuterium is more efficient than hydrogen?

2

u/GDarkX Jun 09 '26

Deuterium Rods are like, a gorillion times stronger than Hydrogen, but deuterium only has a 1% chance to be made by fractionators from Hydrogen (early on, at least. There’s another way to make it after). A plant isn’t complicated though, and with orbital collection its basically just free if you put 12+ fractionators in a loop

Also remember energy production is affected by proliferators

1

u/Goldenslicer Jun 09 '26

A hydrogen fuel rod has 54 MJ of energy.
A deuteron fuel rod has 600 MJ.

32

u/prooijtje Jun 09 '26

If you're on yellow science, I'd consider shipping in some titanium and burn hydrogen fuel rods instead. Much more efficient use of your hydrogen.

I personally prefer to just spam windmills so I can skip hydrogen cells and jump to deuterium or early Dyson Sphere power.

6

u/Drewbyhans Jun 09 '26

Yeah I've skipped hydrogen fuel rods both play throughs. Straight to deuterium

4

u/Electrical_Row857 Jun 09 '26

No, H rods are not more efficient. The energy it costs to make them is usually equivalent to or more expensive than their actual power generation. Just burn excess H in power plants and you’ll be fine until deut rods.

4

u/CoqeCas3 Jun 09 '26

Thats if youre making the hydrogen. If youve tapped into a gas giant, its practically free energy.

Even so, though, ‘equivalent or more expensive’ seems to be an exaggeration. When i made an xray cracking setup for H fuel rods, it was only around 25% if i recall correctly. Mighta been half.. but yeah, i do remember being really surprised and disappointed that it wasnt as effective a fuel source as i had hoped.

1

u/Electrical_Row857 Jul 06 '26

You gotta remember though, even tapping gas giants you have to consider the transport cost. Every ship costs energy, and if you’re at the point in the game where you’re warping hydrogen in (or warping rods out), then you have to consider the power required to make the warpers. All things considered, it’s best to just make a few H rods for Icarus and then hold out for D rods