Wood-fired generator

A wood-fired generator is a power source that runs by burning wood as fuel, producing some heat as a byproduct.
== Acquisition ==
 
== Summary ==
The wood-fired generator consumes 22 wood per day and generates a constant 1000W as long as it is switched on and fueled. It can hold up to 75 fuel at a time, for a maximum run time of 3.27 days. Fuel consumption is not dependent on how much power is actually drawn. Fuel has to be delivered to the generator by a hauler colonist. It can be switched off; in the off state it will neither consume fuel nor produce power. 
It outputs light in a 6 tile radius, with the nearest tiles being above 50% light level and considered lit. Note that the light source is centered at the bottom-left tile of the generator, rather than the "true" center of the generator. It heats at a rate of 6 heat per second.
Generators are temporarily disabled by sources of EMP, with downtime scaling to the EMP damage dealt. During this time, it will not generate any power. Unlike mechanoids, generators do not adapt to EMP and thus can be continuously restunned.
== Analysis ==
Wood-fired generators incur considerable labor costs for chopping and hauling wood, but provide an improvement from neolithic technology. They can make a decent source of consistent, earlygame power.
=== Wood powered appliances ===
A variety of buildings are powered directly by wood, such as campfires and torch lamps. It is significantly more efficient to fuel a generator and run the electric equivalents, if all 1000 W of power is used. The generator does not scale with power use, so if power is wasted, then fueled versions may be superior. In addition, electric buildings require more infrastructure, and are vulnerable to solar flares and other interruptions.
Wood-powered appliance 	Wood per day	Electric equivalent 	Equivalent wood per dayEquivalent wood per day is assuming is the percentage of a wood fired generator power generation multiplied by the generators wood consumption. Note that this assumes that the generators entire production capacity is used.
CampfireCampfires and passive coolers regulate temperature at the same rate as heaters and coolers, but have a maximum/minimum temperature. In addition, both campfires and passive coolers are unable to be turned off, consuming wood until none is left. (roofed)	 	Heater 	
Passive cooler 	 	Cooler 	
Fueled stove 	 	Electric stoveFueled stoves and smithies only consume power when being actively worked, while electric stoves and smithies have to manually toggled off to save power. This comparison assumes they are on for the same length of time.	
Fueled smithy 	 	Electric smithy 	
Torch lamp (roofed) 	 	Standing lampStanding lamps don't produce heat, unlike torch lamps, but light a larger area. This also does not include the effect of the Advanced lights halving the power consumption. 	
=== Wind turbines ===
Wind turbines are also unlocked via researching Electricity. They require no labor to maintain, but do require a large amount of space free of structures and trees. This can make them difficult to defend, and completely unsuitable in certain base layouts. Wind turbine power output is variable, realistically forcing the construction of batteries to smooth out periods of low power production. 
If you have both wind and wood-fired generators, there's no reason why you can't use both at the same time. You can use wood when wind power is low, turning off the generator when extra power isn't required.
=== Chemfuel powered generators ===
A chemfuel powered generator is generally more efficient in terms of both wood and work. However, it is difficult to obtain chemfuel in the earlygame.
Each chemfuel generator generates W of power. Assuming the colony is running a biofuel refinery to make chemfuel from wood, each consumes wood per day and an extra of work. Powering the biofuel refinery takes W of power, but takes only to produce enough fuel for in-game days of fuel, or on average equivalent of a constant load of only W. 
The extra of work is not nothing, but the reduced wood saves at least of work in tree cutting work, assuming the most efficient harvest tree and that the tree doesn't have to be planted first. This means that a pawn requires a Plant Work Speed of (Plants skill 13) to make it more work efficient to use the wood fired generator, and this increases to a massive speed if the tree has to be planted as well. This also ignores walking distance; the wood-fired generator often forces colonists to walk further as more trees are harvested.
Also, you can make chemfuel out of raw food; corn or even rice take much less work to cultivate than trees, while taking up less space. Meanwhile, insect meat can be extremely plentiful and used all the same. Finally, boomalopes can create chemfuel from grass, which takes no work to grow.
The only disadvantage of chemfuel generators is that they require chemfuel. Biofuel Refining costs 700 points of research. Boomalopes require you to tame / buy the boomalopes in the first place. Provided you can make chemfuel, the chemfuel generator is strictly better.
== Version history ==
* 0.13.1135 - Added.
* 0.15.1279 - Fueled generator will consume fuel faster. Fuel duration 5 days -> 3 days 9 hours. 
* Beta 18 - Name changed from fueled generator to wood-fired generator to prevent ambiguity with the Chemfuel powered generator, which was added in the same update. No other changes made.
* 1.1.0 - Refueling is now toggleable.
Category:Power