I have about 80% power during the day with the starting solar atm, I have a steam engine setup but Not 100% how to make fuel effeciently.

I'll try some napkin math on steam power in this mod. I will assume coke is the chosen steam engine fuel and you want a full yellow belt capacity. To get 31.5 mw of coke you need 266.7 wood pellets per minute, but you also consume that material to regenerate carbon dioxide so the real requirement is 466.7 wood pellets.

Assuming 100% of the mineral water comes from dirt water electrolysis slag, the energy cost of making those wood pellets is ~17.7 mW. It take 3.5 Mw more to make the coke from the extra pellets, so you in theory net about 9.3 Mw minus logistics power if we assume the extra 900kw of coke that isn't eaten by the steam engines is enough for furnace fuel.

The minimum infrastructure required for this minus logistics is 60 steam engines, 84 boilers, 15 furnaces, 13 ore crushers, 35 assembly machine 1, 26 liquifiers, 47 algae farms, 24 electrolyzers, and 9 offshore pumps. Leaving one space between all buildings suggests this takes up at least 8.1 chunks of space, more realistically you would budget at least 10 for it. The starting landfill you begin with allows you to get just shy of one chunk filled out. To simplify logistics due to the high volume of algae I would probably build 2:1:1.5 for the algae-> liquifier -> assembly 1 and round to 48:24:32, adding 1 algae farm and 5 liquifiers over the requirement for that part of the production chain. A vast majority of the space requirement comes from the algae farm to wood pellet part.

Coke pellets gets you 6.3 more mW net, or a 43% improvement. There may be other efficiency improvements I'm overlooking, but I think you get about 25% net power (i.e. 1.3 mW per 1:14:10) if you burn bricks, 33% power back on coke and 50% with coke pellets from a truly standalone setup, which can be slightly improved if you have natural byproducts to feed back.

I think you need just over one full chunk of space, 8 algae farms, 6 assembly 1, 6 liquifiers, 3 electrolyzers and two ore crushers to make one steam engine line worth of wood pellets. Add in the engines and fuel processing itself and you get roughly 1.5 chunks. A similar solar setup takes up 20-25% of the space.

It probably makes sense to make at least one steam engine setup, but don't be surprised if the net power is only roughly equal to the starting solar unless you make coke or coke pellets, recycle other waste into it, or get more efficient buildings etc.

I'm actually curious if its faster to use low resources and leverage the starting stuff for tech is faster or if going hard on landfill and building wide stuff like steam power algae farms is better. I suspect making the single steam engine setup and using that power for landfill generation could be a strong early game strategy to snowball wide. I think it sounds more fun than the low material, low power stuff I put up with in my first game rushing solar power.

I started a new game to try steam out and it seems like two setups can supply just enough power to automate the starting ore generation and make 1 landfill per second while taking up about six chunks of space.

http://i.imgur.com/ci58MI3.jpg

Did some more math for the primary steam power user:

It looks like the first ore crystallization line requires 1.2 mW per base unit, so once you have coke pellets one steam line should support four crystallizers I believe. I'm seeing 2:1:0.75:3.75 for Crystallizers, filter units, liquefiers and electrolyzers. Supporting stuff looks like 0.1:0.15:0.15:0.15:0.15 for the sulf wastewater, water purification, dioxide, sulf acid, and filter assembly machines. Seems like a pretty clean ratio at 20 units for 40/20/15/75/2/3/3/3 requiring 24 mW of power or about 10 coke pellet steam engine setups.

Smaller build could be 8/4/3/15/1/1/1/1 or maybe 8/4/4/16/1/1/1/2 for convenience in layout. That would be about 5 mw or three coke based steam engine setups.

You can also do 12/6/6/24/1/1/1/3 to get closer to the capacity of the single units and get 2 crystallizers per ore, I think that is what I ended up doing in my first game for my first major ore expansion after rushing solar. That would be supported by three coke pellet based steam engine setups.

Haven't built a crystallization setup I've liked yet sadly. I think for expandability you can separate the process into three primary components, the crystallization/filtration, the slurry generation, and the water treatment/sulfuric acid part. That should prevent stuff from running into each other for the most part and let you tweak building counts and ratios when you get upgrades like ceramic filtration etc. slurry generation and part of the water treatment require water access so it may make sense to declare a corner for it and have one long edge for slurry and the other shorter edge for water treatment with the crystallization taking the interior space of that rectangle.

It looks like equal mk machine slurry generation is always 1:5:1 and mk4 caps the offshore pump out so maybe makes sense to build that as a functional unit.

When you switch to ceramic the purified water requirement goes up a ton and you will have a bunch of extra sulfur. For example a rough 45.8 mW ~mk3 setup for 1600 ore per minute is :
Crystallization: 48 crystal mk2 /24 filter mk2 / 12 assembly 3
Slurry: 15 liq mk3 /70 electro mk3/15 offshore
Water Treatment: 7 Sulfuric Wastewater mk1 hydro / 24 Water Purification mk1 Hydro / 6 offshore
Sulfuric Acid: 3 Sulfuric Chemical mk2 / 4 Dioxide chemical mk2.

Scaling to a functional unit of 400 ore per minute I'd round the wastewater to 8 and acid mk2 to 4 for a rough rough ratio of 12/6/3/4/20/2/6/1/1 for early blue science tech mk3ish ceramic filtration for ~11.5 mW. I haven't run numbers on equal tech steam engine setup but I'm pretty sure you can get that covered by four steam engine lines (56% net power), not sure if you can push it to 3 (75% net power).

I took a look at the material requirements for a steam engine setup. I don't suggest that it's the best possible setup but the one I used in my current game requires the following:

Steam Engine Raw Materials

87 Stone Pipe 87 Brick
42 Stone Underground (21 crafts) 315 Brick
79 Transport Belt (39.5 crafts) 118.5 Iron
39 Red Inserters 234 Iron, 58.5 Copper, 156 Cellulose 195 Brown Algae
37 Power Poles (18.5 crafts) 18.5 Copper, 222 Cellulose
34 Yellow Inserters 102 Iron, 51 Copper, 136 Cellulose, 170 Brown Algae
14 Boilers 14 Iron, 70 Stone
10 Underground Belt (5 crafts) 87.5 Iron,
10 Steam Engines 200 Iron,
8 Algae Farms 80 Iron,
7 Assembly Machine 1 133 Iron, 31.5 Copper, 84 Cellulose, 105 Brown Algae
6 Liquefier 1 60 Brick, 90 Iron, 45 Copper, 120 Cellulose, 150 Brown Algae
5 Stone Furnace 70 Stone
4 Electrolyser 40 Brick, 80 Iron, 30 Copper, 80 Cellulose, 100 Brown Algae
3 Ore Crusher 30 Brick, 60 Iron
2 Offshore Pump 6 Iron, 6 Copper, 16 Cellulose, 20 Brown Algae

2 Flare Stack 20 Steel, 40 brick, 10 iron, 10 basic electronic boards
10 Basic Boards 15 copper 40 cellulose 56 brown algae
50 Basic Electronics 5 Copper, 3 Tin, 10 Carbon
5 Solder Plate 3.2 Lead, 1.8 Tin

Totals:

1284 Stone
1255 Iron
215.5 Copper
854 Cellulose
796 Brown Algae
6.2 Tin
1.8 Lead

Total Ore Required @75% Sort:
1960.7 Copper/Iron
Add Tin and Lead @50%
1964.7 Ore Total

Only really considering the ore requirement as I find that is the biggest bottleneck.
The starting crystallizers provide 45 ore per minute assuming full power.
One steam engine setup requires 43 minutes 40 seconds of game time to accrue with 2 crystallizers.

Comparing to a rough solar equivalent for 50% net power of the steam engine setup I would see 60 panels and 31.5 hc accumulators. The raw material totals for that are as follows:

60 Solar Panels 8 Iron Plate, 8 Copper Plate
14 Basic Electronic Boards 21 Copper Plate, 56 Cellulose, 78.4 Brown Algae
70 Basic Electronics 7 Copper, 4.2 Tin, 14 Carbon
7 Solder Plate 4.48 Lead, 2.52 Tin
31.5 HC Accumulators 94.5 Iron Plate
315 Batteries 630 Lead Plate, 315 Sulfuric Acid, 315 Plastic Bars

Totals:

102.5 Iron
36 Copper
6.72 Tin
634.48 Lead Plate
56 Cellulose
78.4 Brown Algae

At this point of the game you would use combo sort for low level ores so plate to ore is 100% for a total of 779.7 plates vs the 1478 of equal steam power. I think this is the big reason solar wins beyond using less space for equal power.

If plates are the bottle neck for creating more power like I think they are then you get 89.6% more power per plate by choosing to build solar instead of of steam once you have the technology for it. The plastic demand is not insignificant but it operates on a completely separate channel to ore generation and I didn't feel strapped for it that much in my solar game versus the huge bottlenecks I'd constantly see on raw ore.