I would propose a change to power consumption, burning coal is 50% efficiency (3.6 in, 1.8 out) so it would make sense to do the same here, boiling water to make steam IS extremely lossy after all.

Maybe a higher tech research for a more efficient electric boiler? Say 75%? (3.6 in 2.7 out/2.4 in 1.8 out)

hum...
I understand the concept of fueled boilers having 50% efficiency since you're extracting the energy from the fuel you input. Burning stuff to produce heat you always will consume more fuel than what you transform into usable energy. But on the electricity side, you already doing that to produce the electricity on the first place.
For example the heat-exchanger boiler, it has no efficiency loss in the process of converting heat from the reactor into steam.
(IDK if you can set efficiency value of fuel burning into electricity-type "fuel" but if not I could make some code around it to reproduce that behaviour.)

You could, but it would be easier to set the output statically and just let it do its thing, even if you think 50% is too much loss, you should still consider having the efficiency be less than 100%, it's not unreasonable to expect some loss I think.

Given that a main use of this is to simply generate steam from solar power, it could be 10% efficient and still be useful.

If you're using boiler-generated electricity to power the electrical boiler, then you're essentially just using the system to teleport steam down the copper wires instead of through pipes. There should be some cost to that.

I'd like the 75% number.

Version 0.16 has 0.6, 0.7, and 0.8 efficiency values for boilers, altho needs balancing, I'd like your feedback on the forums so I can reply faster.

Regular electric-boilers have 0.6 efficiency, bob's MK2, MK3, MK4 and MK5 have 0.6, 0.7, 0.8 and 1.0 respectively, lemme know if that's good.

I was looking for an electric boiler. But 60% efficiency is pretty low. An electric kettle is 80-90% effiecient IRL. And 100% efficiency is guaranteed for heaters when there's no leaks.
In Factorio there's no heat radiating away, so 100% is in line with anything else really.
Why the burner boilers are 50% efficient is a mystery, they should be just as efficient as any other heater.

Physically, the process of converting heat to electricity is the process that should be less than 100% efficient, while conversion to heat is always 100% efficient.

I don't play Bob's. I guess this mod isn't meant to be played without it. Would have preferred if efficiency was a setting instead of being dependent on Bob's mods. But there's another electric boiler mod I think, maybe it works better?

Edit: the vanilla burner boiler is 100% efficient. It was fixed in 0.15 or something I think...

I am working on a tech-based upgrade for the boilers, but so far I'm having issues separating the depedancy on omni-library to do the trick, hopefully when 1.0 hits I also apply the upgraded version of the electric-boiler via research. Also I plan on doing a 0.8 efficiency for vanilla boilers with 3 levels of research going up to 93.75% which would be equivalent to switching the internal heating mechanism from copper to titanium alloy and using ceramic dispersal arrays with Peltier's pastilles to maintain the internal cooling.
I know this isn't based on reality its a game after all but still, feels like it would be cool.

Personally, I don't want any overcomplications. I was looking for a trivially simple mod that added an electric boiler, no more, no less. It should be like the burner boiler, but electric. A mod named "Electric Boiler" sounded like it would do just that. Instead it's a mod that depends on Bob's mods for balance, doesn't have an efficiency setting, introduces tech research to alter the efficiency (and any ratios I've planned for and spams the tech tree) and alters vanilla components on top of that! This is just getting less simple with every post in the thread you make.

But if it's not for me I can just not use it. Your vision for the mod is different. You can have your electric network total conversion mod if that is what you want to make. I'll find an "Electric Boiler" mod or fix it myself (or don't bother), though it's going to be named something else since this thing has taken the proper name :s
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/AlternativeSteam has an electric builer, but it adds some other stuff I don't care for also.
Same with https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Advanced_Electric

Oh no, you confused the part where I said about the internals. That's real life thing, regular real life boilers, the most basic ones have an efficiency of 0.6% because their internal heating mechanism is based on copper alloys and the cooling system is the concrete shell. In the game, the research would represent replacement of the internals but its not really a replacement, its the same structure that requires regular boiler and green chips to craft, same electric boiler entity, just the research would figuratively make you think the entity is being changed.

Based on your feedback, I'll make some setting adjustments:
- New Setting: use research or efficiency control
- New Setting: if above is efficiency, set value min 0.6 max 0.95 default 0.8
- New Research: Electric Boiler efficiency upgrade. 3 ranks, boost efficiency of the boiler up to 93.75% based on research.

and the cooling system is the concrete shell

Obviously the heater becomes inefficient if you add a cooling system to it...
Look, heaters are never inefficient in the sense that all energy becomes heat eventually, it's just that you don't always capture all the heat.
But I don't think I can explain it. Maybe this will help: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_efficiency
Not that it matters for the mod though really.

Based on your feedback, I'll make some setting adjustments:

Thanks, sounds much better!

• New Setting: use research or efficiency control
• New Setting: if above is efficiency, set value min 0.6 max 0.95 default 0.8

Why a min and a max value? Seems kind of pointless. Maybe I want to try 0.1, 1.0 or 10.0 (yes, 1000%)? It's not like the mod breaks because I try strange non-negative values, right?

The purpose of a min value and max value are to prevent creation of energy like magic, I don't know if it causes issues in the game because I haven't tested these changes yet, so can't confirm or deny anything yet.

Adding a value greater than 1 for efficiency, means that you're outputting more than you're inputting, since the output resource is the same as the input resource: Energy, having efficiency greater than 1 means you're creating more power than consuming, that's against the base rule of the mod: It can't generate more energy than it consumes. Which is why the max value is always less than1.
The modded bob's boilers also behaves the same way, they can't generate more energy than they consume, but they are more complicated to suit the modpack.

The purpose of a min value and max value are to prevent creation of energy like magic

The min value of 0.6 doesn't prevent anything like this.

A value higher than 1.0 might need some special logic to handle that case, maybe, and I'll understand if you don't want to write deal with it and if you don't want it to be a energy creation mod. But 1.0 efficiency doesn't create energy won't cause any issues whatsoever. I don't really need 1.0 efficiency, but it seems weird to arbitrarily set the max to 0.95 instead of 1.0 when none of the issues you speak of happens at 1.0 and is therefore within the base rule of the mod as you explained it.

Regardless I'm glad you are improving it and giving some good settings that makes the mod do pretty much exactly what I expect from a mod named "Electric Boiler" :)

Edit: Vanilla burner boiler alterations are opt-in options when added, right?

After a lot of testing and trying to put my research idea to a good use, it won't make it to the 1.0 release, only the setting one will.
Vanilla boilers are 1:1 ratio, they produce exactly the ammount of energy they consume so there's no loss or gain in the process, therefore the settings for my electric variation will be the raw ammount of output they can have. Normal boilers produce and consume 1.8MW, the setting will only change this value, so the electric will consume and produce the ammount specified in MW. If you input a very low value, say 0.1, it will consume and produce steam at 0.1MW ratio, hardly 1/s if you input, say, 30, it will consume and produce steam at 30MW ratio so 3000/s regular pipe won't transport that much but you do you...

Waiting feedback on the values see if they seems good.

Regardless I'm glad you are improving it and giving some good settings that makes the mod do pretty much exactly what I expect from a mod named "Electric Boiler" :)

Thanks, I like when ppl provide feedback so I can have ideas to improve the mod.

Edit: Vanilla burner boiler alterations are opt-in options when added, right?

My mod doesn't change vanilla burner boiler behaviour.

Vanilla boilers are 1:1 ratio, they produce exactly the ammount of energy they consume so there's no loss or gain in the process, therefore the settings for my electric variation will be the raw ammount of output they can have. Normal boilers produce and consume 1.8MW, the setting will only change this value, so the electric will consume and produce the ammount specified in MW. If you input a very low value, say 0.1, it will consume and produce steam at 0.1MW ratio, hardly 1/s if you input, say, 30, it will consume and produce steam at 30MW ratio so 3000/s regular pipe won't transport that much but you do you...

Sounds great! :D
Will it default to 1.8 MW then?

It's not really necessary but an output temperature and efficiency value might be fun to play around with. That would mean you can make storage tanks more or less energy dense compared to accumulators and also do tradeoffs with lower efficiency and but higher temps, or just reduce temperature or whatever. Just writing about it since it's fun to theorycraft different energy storage mechanisms and having those settings means I could actually try them out if I felt like it. I'll probably just stick to 1.8 MW, 100% efficiency and 165°C steam anyways though.

My mod doesn't change vanilla burner boiler behaviour.

Good :)

• Yes, default value is 1.8MW, same as vanilla burner boiler.

Efficiency does nothing to boilers as far as my testing went: efficiency and effectiveness both doesn't change anything on the produced steam ammount which is the resource that is generated from the consumption of energy. Unless you mean energy output 1.8 * efficiency, so, if you input 90% or 0.9 efficiency the final value would be 1.72MW which is the same as inputting 1.72. Since efficiency does nothing on the entity, it would consume 1.72MW of power to produce steam at 57/s @ 165º.

• As for the temperature of the steam, I might think somewhere in the future for an electric heater of some sort where it increases or decreases the steam temperature, I don't have any ideas yet, its just theory and a lot of work to do in 24h so it won't happen on the next update :).

Also with the launch of factorio tomorrow (its aug 13th here 18:50), I will only improve and maintain the 1.0+ version, so the 0.17 will not receive any fixes, improvements or anything like that, sorry.

Ok :)
I'm on 0.18 right now anyways so for me 0.17 doesn't really matter. And since 1.0 will be the new stable version I don't think anyone else will care about 0.17 either.

And... Launched! Have fun peepz. Lemme know about what you wanna improve.