Power Plant (Echoes)

## League Diamond-Core Power Station

 **Dev. Status** | Conceptual

*"But... that's not a power station! That's a battery!"*

- Allied scientist, upon first witnessing a Diamond-Core Power Station.
Diamonds, big, shiny, hard, and the League has many of them.

**Many** of them.

Many enough for some of them to be ground into weaponized fine diamond-dust that can shred anything they come in contact with. Many enough to be used in adorning and decorating the sparkling and picturesque cities of the League. Many enough for the League to become the world capital of diamonds.

Having a near monopoly on the diamond market, and with the recent innovations and discovery of the capacity to create artificial diamonds, Zakim Diamonds Incorporated has always had a large surplus of diamonds.

This has, of course, led to many investigations, with the sponsorship of the sultan himself. These investigations have led to many results, from their use as protective armor to the use for lens to the spectrum weaponry which makes the League so famous, Zakim is sure that there's many more uses for the diamonds than simply fancy jewelry.

A good representative of these hopes is the research that has been done regarding using diamonds for their energy capacities and, while their healing and metaphysical properties have presented questionable results, their capacity to store energy is a completely different history...

Diamond, when doped with some boron, becomes a excellent electric conductor. With the advent of the league's diamond technology, investigation into the use of diamonds for electrical purposes was well underway. Military purposes were investigated without the pithy constraints generated by conventional manufacturing.

The league's technicians quickly realized that their new manufacturing techniques would not allow them to generate power with diamonds, but do something equally easy for military purposes.

Using the league's manufacturing techniques for diamond structures, a gigantic porous diamond capacitance was made: two intertwined diamond parts, shaped together and encased in a regular diamond shell in the shape of a cut diamond. A few of these gigantic capacitance's could hold all the power needed to run the league's buildings on the battlefield.

While the gigantic diamond batteries can hold all the power a entire base might reasonably need for a month, their discharge rates are not as fluid, making multiple power stations a necessity rather then a convenience. Some League commanders have been known to stress the discharge mechanisms to their absolute limit in order for temporary gain, at the cost of constant maintenance and possible structural failure.

## Combine Geobacter Plant

Template:Combine Buildingbox

**Electricity production by forced symbiosis of eugenically altered *Geobacter* strains**

*\*Name\* Et.All*

*Department of microbial eugenics, University of Florianópolis*

*februari 1964*

It has been suggested by earlier studies that members of the *geobacteraceae* are capable of utilizing electrodes as electron acceptors for anaerobic respiration. This natural electron transfer process may be utilized to produce electrical power. Several eugenic enhancement methods were used to produce two strains of *Geobacter*. The novel metabolic pathways of the first strain allow for optimal utilization of hydrocarbons as electron donor and improved electron transfer to the electron accepting electrode.

[WIP]

## Contingent Solar Plant

 **Dev. Status** | Conceptual

Cheap, light and quickly made, the Contingent solar plant suffers from a crippling lack of armour, and generates less power than other factions; for example, it takes two solar plants to equal a Soviet reactor. Their combined cost is, however, $200 less, but their combined buildtime is six seconds longer. You will want to protect them well, they will not survive near the front lines.

The Solar Plant was adapted by the Contingent from preexisting Allied solar panels; redesigned to have maximum efficiency from minimum materials, these solar plants turn up all over the Contingent's territories. They are unbelievably cheap, partially due to the redesign, and partly due to not needing any fuel, and are so efficient that they can even work on cloudy days. These advantages are tempered by some disadvantages; due to their minimalisation, they generate less power than other factions, and so more are needed. As well as this, due to the Contingent's fighting style, they were never designed to be shot at. They will need to be protected well, or else a single dedicated conscript could bring down your entire power generation!

## Unionist Liquid Gas Power Plant

Template:Unionist Building Box
America has one resource that is has been hesitant to exploit in light of the possible energy shortages the CIA predicts may ensue should another major conflict arise in the world. America's immense reserves of natural gases under the massive shale deposits on the Eastern seaboard. With almost more natural gas in the continental US than the Persian Gulf has oil, America's energy future (should it choose to follow a natural gas-based energy policy) is secured for years.

For this reason, the American Unionists have decided that where they deploy, they will use this available resource whenever possible. Though nowhere near as powerful as the fusion reactors of the Allied Nations, they still provide a good amount of power for the size of the structure.

## Commonwealth Electric Dynamo

 **Dev. Status** | Conceptual

"*If it weren't for electricity, we'd all be watching television by candlelight."*

-  George Gobel
The first power plants contained massive, sparking generators, called dynamos. These massive, sparking, hissing creations were the earliest attempts and providing power on an organized and massive scale. All operating on direct current, they required massive amounts of coal or other fuels to drive the forces needed to drive the magnetic turbines that kept the power running. Their death came from the hand of, who else, Nikola Tesla. His alternating current could power a larger area for less upkeep, and the Battle of the Currents finally swung in favor of his investor, George Westinghouse. The Wizard of Menlo conceded defeat (eventually), and the poor dynamo was chained, made subservient to the future of power as a mere converter of AC current for DC devices.

But like with all technological leaps forward, the humble dynamo isn't dead yet. Despite the power and majesty of the fusion power plant, India's economy has restricted their use almost exclusively to Grand Delhi and other major capitol cities. Other areas are forced to rely on oil or natural gas burning plants. The rest of the areas have to rely on crude generators or early experiments in solar energy generously donated by Allied scientists.

This, of course, means the Frontier Corps has to make do with less than modern equipment. Their dynamos are designed to work off of any hydrocarbon, crude oil to jet fuel depending on what's available. Of course, the more refined stuff works best, but there are stories of how desperate Frontier Corps members stationed in unstable areas will use unlit Molotov cocktails as fuel to preserve their own stores. Of course, once supply lines are established, there are reports the generators can be supplied with upgrades to make them even more efficient.

## Forum Thermal Exchanger

### Background

*"Get up! The sun rises for everybody."*

- Work posters inside Thermal Exchangers.
For all the miracles and incredible attributes credited to Cybersyn, there’s one fact that not even their most fervent supporters can deny: It’s extreme consumption of energy. With each terminal of Synco consuming 250 kilowatts of energy and them being spread all throughout the Federation, the energetic crisis is not a mere question of if, but of when, the government is very much aware of this fact, and has taken all kinds of measures to make up for it.

Some options had to be discarded from the get-go, Solar Energy is just too experimental to be relied on, and it’s not like either the Allies or the Contingent were willing to share their secrets anyways. Wave-force and Zero Point energy are similarly verboten as trade secrets. Geobacter Plants aren’t as useful in the large and empty expanses of the Patagonia or the northern deserts, without mentioning that allowing any entrance of Technate technicians has been deemed to be a grave mistake in the eyes of the Vicar and the people of the GAF.

In the same vein, the current political situation has made it difficult if not impossible to any other sort of cooperation with the northern Technate, disallowing the use of other powerful alternatives, such as building Dams along the Iguaçu. With most of the proven and reliable energy sources discarded and the fossil fuel reserves from Argentina being stretched to the max, the Scientists of the Federation had to turn to more esoteric and extravagant sources of energy to supply these needs.

Wind farms have been constructed all throughout the Patagonia, providing at least a patch solution in the meanwhile, though it has been admitted that it’s not quite the ideal solution, as the strong wind currents aren’t something one can rely on, not to mention they have a disturbing capacity to disappear in the middle of the night surrounded by sightings of “strange objects” moving in the distance, while Tesla technology, courtesy of the Soviet Union, has been installed on key locations throughout the Federation, but the frequent disruptions in shipping from the Soviet Union to the Federation have made most efforts futile when it comes to installing them en-masse.

The Scientists at Huemul Project are still claiming to be “just a few weeks away” to be able to get fission energy reliably, though the events in China have dissuaded most hopes of this technology to be safe, while their other two energetic breakthroughs have shown much more appeal and interest:
The Weissen-Gonzales flux, a chance discovery made when an investigator, whose only remaining information is that he was named Gonzales, had managed to smuggle Ayahuasca into the Huemul Complex and while intoxicated, started playing with particle colliders, it was then discovered that it was indeed possible to “extract” energy from the GAP universe through a reliable and mostly safe method, though deemed a State secret, it made an instant revolution within the Facilities, it seemed that, after decades of investigation, the Project had already reached tangible success, and soon energy could be distributed in bottles to every household in the country!

The drawbacks were soon to be made apparent however, first of all, bottling energy is easier said than done and second, building the necessary equipment to get this energy was still way beyond the capacities of the Federation, and with a world war still raging on, the chances of getting help from Allied Scientists were pretty much nill, most worryingly however, rumours were starting to spread that there was a certain… something trying to get through the generators, something very dangerous, while this was dismissed as nonsense by most of the community, enough of the scientists involved where deemed too psychologically damaged to continue working on the project, being dimissed, and any further experiments with the flow cancelled. Finally, there’s been one reliable, economic and powerful source of energy that has really been deemed the future and the solution of the economic crisis in the Federation: Geothermal.

Long as it is, the Andes are not without a lack of very much active volcanoes, and where there’s volcanoes, there’s magma, fire and the power that comes from the very entrails of the Earth. Being indeed located in the Andes, Huemul Scientists were quick to realize the potential of this source, and being years behind schedule and desperate to show any results, they resolved that they had nothing to lose and starting investing to figure out how to tap into this powerful source. Thanks to the convenient discovery of binary cycle power plants that were quickly leaked from the Soviet Union, they were indeed successful, being found to be cost effective and quickly implemented all throughout the Andes, and later, elsewhere in the Federation, adding yet another success for the Huemul Proyect, securing at least a couple more years for investigation.

Much has been said about this unorthodox solution, like the fact that they won’t be able to rely on it if they ever decide to expand the model elsewhere on the continent, while so more radical oppositors take it as another demonstration of how the Federation has ill intentions towards the Inkarri movement and Bolivia in general.

Finally, it also has been commented on the odd behavior of the personnel working inside these plants, they’ve gotten much praise from international organizations for the inclusion of a vast number of indigenous peoples into the operations, said to be preferred for their closer connection to the Earth and indeed, it’s been demonstrated that most Geothermal Plants have at least one Machi inside the facilities and that Nguillatuns are performed monthly and with a required assistance from everyone working in the plants and their families, so that they can have the “favour” of the mountain spirits and can secure in that way the constant flow of energy from the mountain. While these methods and their effectiveness have been questioned, the fact that these plants work and that they provide work is unquestioned and, as such, they’ve been left to keep operative as per norm.

## Ecumenical Power Generator

Template:Ecumene Buildingbox
*"I have no idea what I'm even doing."*

- An Allied Engineer who happened to infiltrate a Power Generator before capture.
All armies require the ability to create and store energy to power their structures, and the Imilki Ecumene is no different despite coming from the depths of space. Ecumenical power generators work off the process of electron disassoctiation, where Electrons are "flipped" into positrons, and the resulting energy from both the annihilation of the positrons with an introduced stream of electrons and the energy from the suddenly extremely reactive naked nuclei are harvested by direct energy harvesting mechanisms that skip the whole "heat the water to turn a turbine" process earth based power plants utilize.

How the Ecumene is able to directly convert energy into a usable format without engaging in the middle man that nearly every form of energy generation on earth save for photovoltaic plants utilizes is unknown. But it allows for a great deal more efficiency than Earth based systems, and thus allows for very little fuel to be used, and the fact that literally anything can be used as fuel for the disassoiation process is just icing on the cake. Furthermore, Ecumenical Power Generators are supremely clean, leaving nothing behind as waste product as the reactants are swiftly disposed of, though the Aliens are certainly not overly concerned about Earth's environment.

Ecumenical power generators appear to take more resources to deploy than most of their basic counterparts, though they are at the very least in the same region of building speed as anyone else's plants. However, to make up for the greater time and resource investment, Power Generators produce substantially more power than any equivalent, allowing for exceedingly efficient usage of space in Ecumenical outposts. All the more room to place the structures that are needed for the Ecumene's war machines planetside and to expand their operations and all the more fuel for their own vicious base defenses.

Furthermore, they can be upgraded to produce twice as much power via a process that greatly increases the efficiency of the energy to work mechanism, further pushing them ahead of their competitors and ensuring that Ecumenical bases will be richly supplied with energy for all their needs. Of course, the Ecumene is hardly willing to share its energy generation secrets with the Earth. And so with this being the case, much of the workings of Power Generators remain an utter mystery to those privileged few who even know that the Ecumene exists.

Most who get close enough to these bases to get a good glimpse of these wondrous power plants are nearly always swiftly eliminated soon after wards by the dedicated defenders of such Outposts and Redoubts on the Earth committed to ensuring that the Ecumene's observational operations remain cloaked in secrecy until the time comes to escalate protocols. But it seems that there are enough commonalities between human and alien engineering for infiltrators to still shut down the power or for engineers to seize the buildings should they manage to get inside these mysterious facilities.

## See Also

* Power Plant (Paradox)

* Power Plant (Quantum)

* Power Plant (Annihilation)

* Power Plant (Null)

* Power Plant (Pandemonium)

* Power Plant (Insanity)

* Power Plant (Extremis)

* Power Plant (Silentium)