Coastal BioDirt Power Plant 50MW and 100MW

v1.52

This facility uses new trade options to convert Dirt into 50MW or 100MW of electric power. It is self-sufficient in water, supplies its fuel-delivery ship with hydrogen, and converts CO₂ emissions into graphite. The plant can also support any reasonable number of Statues of Maintenance — though building more than 3 offers little benefit. The setup relies on a trade contract exchanging Dirt for Fuel Gas. It can use dirt mined from terrain or produce it internally from compost, biomass, and, only when all other options are exhausted, from wheat or corn. This provides a cheaper and simpler alternative to nuclear energy by utilizing renewable resources during the early phase of the late game. Another advantage of a gas power plant is its ability to easily maneuver electrical output in response to changes in demand.

1. Coastal BioDirt Power Plant 50MW

Note: You need to place the Power Plant together with the Cargo Depot or at least the Depot itself — exactly at the moment when the message shown in screenshot 5 appears. Be sure to manually install 2 Loose Module II for dirt and 4 Fluid Module II for fuel gas, opposite the corresponding conveyors and pipes, and then activate the trade contract.

Note: If you’d like to try the 100 MW version in the future, you can use the blueprint for the full 100 MW power plant and pause construction of the third module (for dirt), the fifth module (for fuel gas) — or just leave their slots empty and pause the entire second 50 MW unit. Later on, you can complete these modules and upgrade all of them to Tier III.

Note: If you already have plenty of dirt mined from terrain, you can pause the construction of the Mixers and Crushers. If you don’t plan to use wheat and corn, you can simply pause the construction of their storages. The Power plant does not require Сhemical plants to operate — without them, it will simply release CO₂ into the atmosphere. You can run it even before unlocking the necessary technology by keeping the chemical plants paused. They are only needed to make the process emission-free.

Startup procedure:

1. Make 2-3 trips with the ship to exchange Dirt and nearly fill the Fuel Gas storage.
2. Unpause the 4 main boilers and the 2 steam pipes leading to the turbines. They are intentionally paused at the start to ensure sufficient fuel reserves.
3. Switch the water storage from import to export — screenshot 6. A certain water reserve is required to start, but afterwards water will be produced in surplus.
4. Upgrade the delivery ship to use hydrogen as fuel. Activate its economy mode.

Resource Productivity:

Maintenance staff: 227

2. Coastal BioDirt Power Plant 100MW

Testing has shown that an 8-module ship operating in standard mode is capable of supplying enough Fuel Gas for a 100 MW power. Over time, it can even accumulate a surplus, even when the plant is running constantly at full load. The main requirement is that the agricultural sector must be able to supply enough raw materials! Salt production was added, as its output was significantly reduced in the new update.

Note: You need to manually install 3 Loose Module III for dirt and 5 Fluid Module III for fuel gas, opposite the corresponding conveyors and pipes, and then activate the trade contract.

The startup procedure is the same, but to simplify the process, it's better to build and launch each 50 MW power unit sequentially rather than all at once, following the procedure described above. The only difference is that the ship must operate in standard mode, making deliveries every 3 months.

Resource Productivity:

Maintenance staff: 450

To maximize agricultural efficiency, I recommend trading slag for sour water: https://hub.coigame.com/Blueprint/Detail/624

The plant design is based on the Hydrogen Fuel Cell concept: https://hub.coigame.com/Blueprint/Detail/613, allowing easy expansion of production by adding new units in a row.

The blueprints shows one example of a possible Power Plant layout. It can also be arranged not perpendicular to the coastline, but parallel to it, but leaving space reserved for future Cargo Depots.

• v1.12 – simplified CO₂ pipelines and adjusted their layout due to incorrect priority behavior in the previous version — not all gas was being sent for processing even when the chemical plants were idle, increased the priority of key components following a stress test.
• v1.2 – fixed low throughput in some pipes that was preventing it from reaching maximum power output.
• v1.5 – 100 MW version has been added.
• v1.52 – minor changes: added a large rock storage for 100MW, as in the new update vehicles struggle to supply smaller ones effectively; also added a balancer near the Depot to supply the Statues.