Energy Sources

This article or section may require a cleanup.

It might not meet the DSP Wiki's quality standards. The specific problem is: Broaden the scope - add all energy sources here, and have Fuels as a subsection.. You can assist by editing it. See Category:Pages needing cleanup for other pages that still need to be reviewed.

Dyson Sphere Program has several ways of generating power. From the wind turbine you start with, to fusion generators, artificial stars and of course the Dyson Sphere itself. Some of these generators and your mech, Icarus, run on one or more different fuels. This page lists all fuels in the game and explains the stats they use.

Fuel stats

All fuels have two stats that tell you how good they are: Energy, and Fuel chamber gen.

Energy is the total energy each item contains. When used in your mech, the Mini Fusion Power Station and the Artificial Star, this is the total energy it generates. Thermal Power Stations incur a 20% energy loss for all fuels they use.

Fuel chamber gen. marks how efficient your mech's Fuel Chamber is at converting the fuel. This only changes how fast energy is recharged, not how much total energy is produced. Note that Coal with 0% is the only fuel that matches your Energy Circuit upgrade level. Both positive and negative percentages are relative to this. For instance, both a Hydrogen Fuel Rod and the 5 Hydrogen it requires to produce contain a total of 40MJ (before patch 0.6.17.5972, Hydrogen Fuel Rod now contains 50MJ), but the fuel rod has a Fuel chamber gen. of +200% instead of the +100% of regular hydrogen, meaning you will use the fuel rod 50% faster (300% total charge rate compared to 200%) than the regular hydrogen and therefore recharge energy 50% faster. The time a fuel item lasts and your recovery speed both depend on your Energy Circuit upgrade level. As this stat only affects your mech, processing hydrogen into fuel rods for use in the Thermal Power Station is a waste of resources.

Burn Time

Burn Time is calculated with the following formula:

(Energy * Efficiency) / Rate == burn time (in seconds)

Energy is the amount of energy stored in the fuel, in Joules.
Efficiency is the conversion efficiency of the generator burning the fuel. For a Thermal Power Station, this is 0.8 (80%).
Rate is the rate at which the generator is supplying power (in Watts) to the grid.

Example: To calculate the burn time of 1 Energetic Graphite in 1 thermal power generator at 100% load:

Energy * Efficiency / Rate == burn time (in seconds)
(6.3 MJ * 0.8) / 2.16MW  == 2.333 seconds

The table below has been calculated at 100% load for all fuels/generators. Fuel typically takes longer than this to burn in practice, because it is abnormal to keep a power grid at 100% load at all times.

List of Fuels

Fuel	Stack Size	Type	Energy	Fuel chamber gen.	Generator	Generator Burn Time	Units per minute in generator
	500	Natural Resource, Chemical	500 kJ	-30%		0.185 s	324.32
	100	Natural Resource, Chemical	1.50 MJ	-10%		0.556 s	107.91
	100	Rare Resource, Material, Chemical	1.80 MJ	-20%		0.667 s	89.96
	100	Natural Resource, Chemical	2.70 MJ	0%		1 s	60
	100	Material, Chemical	6.30 MJ	+60%		2.333 s	25.72
	20	Natural Resource, Chemical	4.00 MJ	+20%		1.481 s	40.51
	20	Material, Chemical	4.40 MJ	+30%		1.630 s	36.81
	20	Rare Resource, Material, Chemical	8.00 MJ	+100%		2.963 s	20.25
	20	Rare Resource, Material, Chemical	8.00 MJ	+100%		2.963 s	20.25
	100	Material, Chemical	900 kJ	-50%		0.333 s	180.18
	100	Material, Chemical	96.0 kJ	-70%		0.036 s	1666.67
	100	Material, Chemical	84.0 kJ	-80%		0.031 s	1935.48
	50	Rare Resource, Chemical	4.80 MJ	+40%		1.778 s	33.75
	30	End Product, Chemical	50.0 MJ	+200%		18.519 s	3.24
	20	End Product, Nuclear Energy	600 MJ	+300%		66.667 s	0.9
	20	End Product, Mass Energy	7.50 GJ	+500%		100 s	0.6
	20	Power storage	90.0 MJ	+100%		2 s	30

Efficient Power Generation

The following chapters describe by example the best ways to utilize the different basic fuel resources Coal, Crude Oil, and Fire Ice, taking the power consumption of required buildings like smelters, refineries, sorters etc. into account.

Coal vs. Energetic Graphite

Maybe surprisingly, burning Coal directly in the Thermal Power Station is more efficient than crafting and burning Energetic Graphite, as shown in the following calculation.

Assumptions

• Four Mining Machines, each covering 6 coal veins.
• No Veins Utilization upgrade.

Burning Coal

• Coal production: 24 Veins * 0.5 Coal/s = 12 Coal/s.
• Energy content: 12 Coal * 2.70 MJ/Coal = 32.4 MJ.
• Number of Power Stations needed to burn 12 Coal/s: 32.4 MJ * 0.8 / 2.16 MW = 12 Stations.
• Power production: 12 Stations * 2.16 MW = 25.92 MW.
• Power consumption:

1. Mining Machines: 4 * 420 kW = 1.68 MW.
2. Sorters (Power Stations): 12 * 18 kW = 0.216 MW.

• Net power production: 25.92 MW - 1.68 MW - 0.216 MW = 24.024 MW.

Burning Energetic Graphite

• Smelting 12 Coal/s needs 12 Smelters and results in 6 Graphite/s.
• Energy content: 6 Graphite * 6.30 MJ/Graphite = 37.8 MJ.
• Number of Power Stations needed to burn 6 Graphite/s: 37.8 MJ * 0.8 / 2.16 MW = 14 Stations.
• Power production: 14 Stations * 2.16 MW = 30.24 MW.
• Power consumption:

1. Mining Machines: 4 * 420 kW = 1.68 MW.
2. Smelters: 12 * 360 kW = 4.32 MW.
3. Sorters (Smelters): 24 * 18 kW = 0.432 MW.
4. Sorters (Power Stations): 14 * 18 kW = 0.252 MW.

• Net power production: 30.24 MW - 1.68 MW - 4.32 MW - 0.432 MW - 0.252 MW = 23.556 MW.

Conclusion

The increased effort of smelting Energetic Graphite from Coal results in ~0.5 MW less net power production.