Power Transmission Laser

This article or section is a Work in Progress.
Assigned to:None

Please discuss changes with assigned users. If no one is assigned, or if the user is inactive, feel free to edit.

Engineering Department

Departmental Head
Chief Engineer

Engineering Roles

Chief Engineer •

Station Engineer •

Atmospheric Tech

Engineering Guides

Engineering •

Hacking •

Construction •

Adv. Construction •

Station Goals •

Tesla Engine •

Singularity Engine •

Solar Arrays •

SMES •

Telecomms •

Atmospherics •

Gas Turbine •

Supermatter •

MODsuits •

Engineering Items •

Engineering SOP

Return to Engineering Portal

The Power Transmission Laser

The power transmission laser can be used to convert excess power into cash. It operates like a SMES unit, with two major differences: It can store a much greater amount of power (two Terajoules, or 2 * 10^12 joules), but it cannot output to the power grid. Instead, it fires a high-energy laser out to a collection terminal in CC, who pay credits for the excess power of the station.

The Price Of Power

Simply put, the more power you send to CC the more they pay you, however there is a degree of diminishing returns on the amount paid per megajoule, so for optimal prices you want to all the power you can as soon as you can. This isn't a big deal when only selling a few tens of megawatts, but when going higher it can put a dent in your income. The amount of credits earned each process cycle(2 seconds) is: (40 * mega_watts_output) / ((4 * mega_watts_output) + (800))

Alternative Uses

In addition to selling excess energy, the PTL can also clear out megafauna in and near the mining base on lavaland. Damaging megafauna with the PTL will delete their loot, even if they're killed by other means afterwards, so only use the PTL for megafauna clearing when the miners can't handle them themselves.
To target megafauna click the target icon in the output section of the interface and select the GPS signal of the megafauna you wish to remove.

Hazards

The PTL is quite safe overall, especially when compared to many other features of the engineering department, however there are still a couple small risks to be aware of:

Flashes

The bore of the PTL emits blindingly bright light. This can be mitigated somewhat with the use of eye protection, and not looking directly at the bore, but above 10MW even welding goggles won't fully protect you. The best way to avoid flashes is to not go in front of the PTL to begin with. Stay behind the black and yellow line and you don't need to worry about flashes.

Radiation

The PTL starts emitting radiation from 30MW of output and up. The amount of radiation is quite small, nowhere near anything like the SM, but it does increase with power production and is still harmful, especially over extended periods of time. So put on some level of rad protection and use a Geiger counter for good measure.

Using the laser

Status

• Reserve Energy: Rather self explanatory. It tells you how much of the PTLs total capacity it has stored
• Grid Saturation: How much of the total available power of the grid would be in use if the PTL could draw as much power as you told it. This includes the PTL as well as all other devices.

Input Controls

Tell the PTL how much power it should try to draw from the network. Number input is for the amount, and the buttons are for different units: Watt, Kilowatt, Megawatt and Gigawatt

Output Control

Same as input controls, with the exception that the PTL cannot output under a Megawatt of power. There is also the little target button which can be used to target megafauna if they are close enough to the mining base.