The BEST Power Block in Space Engineers - Tier list & Comparison

Which power block is truly the best in Space Engineers? Is it the small reactor? The solar panel? The hydrogen engine? Which consumes more fuel, has the highest output, or is cheaper to build? In this video you will get your questions answered about all of the different power blocks in SE, for large grid. Now its time to find out which sits at the very top, and which belongs down in the trash compactor!

The ranking will be shown in a Tier List to give an easy overview as to which one sits on top, and which at the bottom. All whilst each segment about each block will have its own conclusion. There is even a comparison between Hydrogen and Uranium. So, which power block is truly the best in SE?

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IMPORTANT:
This is my own opinion based on a series of tests conducted in-game, and public information that can be found on the Space Engineers Wiki.

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Space Engineers is a voxel-based sandbox game set in space and on planets, developed and published by Czech independent developer Keen Software House. In 2013, the initial developmental release of the game joined the Steam early access program. During the following years of active development, Space Engineers sold over one million units. In total as of 2019 the game has sold over 3.5 million copies In May 2015, for approximately a year and a half, the game's source code was officially available and maintained by KSH to assist the modding community. On December 15, 2016, the game entered Beta and was later officially released on February 28, 2019.
The game is a sandbox game about engineering, construction, exploration and survival in space and on planets. Players build space ships, space stations, planetary outposts of various sizes and uses, pilot ships and travel through space to explore planets and gather resources to survive.

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[conflictZNE]

Despite the large reactor not being the best on paper. It is however, the best block for power output relative to it's PCU cost. A single large reactor can power your entire ship in most cases. Which is very helpful on last-gen consoles since PCU is very limited. Because of that it's my go-to pick power generation

[ILYSNAF]

I think we need a new active power source. They need to add a treadmill we can run on to power our ship. Then we can make a battleship entirely powered by sla- willing volunteer labor.

[draconb]

FYI you can place the wind turbine slightly higher than 8 blocks high, and then have ones coming out from the sides of it so you have 5 total off each tier of blocks. That heavily increases their efficiency and they don't reduce eachother's efficiency. Put a single armor block at the base of each one so they stick out and then you can have them all around

[Gracefulwarrior]

You can also combine multiple power sources . For example, wind and hydrogen, or solar and reactors. The nice things is the renewable power has the first priority to have power taken, which means it will be the first to supply energy. That allows you to not use fuel unless demand exceeds the renewables max power output

[Comicsluvr]

Point of Order: The Batteries don't produce power. They store power produced by one of the others for later use.

[mailleweaver]

The only thing I felt was missing from this was further comparison of the net power output of the hydrogen engine and small reactor. You went to the effort to mine the same volume(? unclear) of each ore and compare those all the way through the process but left out the last bit of info to sum up the final gains and compare their efficiencies.

For those curious: some math extrapolates that the net power production of the hydrogen engine was 809.28 kWh (90.9% efficiency from ore to power), and the net power production of the small reactor was 9753.83 kWh (98.3% efficiency from ore to power).

But what about time? The O2/H2 generator takes almost as much time to refine the fuel as the engine takes to burn it, so that's easy to balance: one ice processor per engine. The refinery took less than half as long to refine the fuel as the reactor took to burn it, so one refinery can serve two reactors and still have a little bit of time leftover to do something else.

Also, the rector took much longer to burn through the total mass of the fuel but produced much more power (more than 11x as much). If you stop the reactor once it's produced as much power as the hydrogen engine, you'll find that it only took 1/3rd the time and you still have 91% of your fuel remaining.

This all means that for every 1 ship load of uranium ore collected, you'd have to collect 11.14 loads of ice to produce the same amount of power. 1.014 of those ice loads would be wasted producing power for the O2/H2 generators while only 0.017 loads of uranium ore would be wasted producing power for refineries. Uranium power is far more dense than hydrogen power and takes less time and effort to collect and produce once you know where the ore is to be found.

Then you have to consider that refineries can have upgrade modules to further adjust fuel and/or time efficiency depending on need while the O2/H2 generators are fixed at their base speed and efficiency.

If you stumble upon a uranium deposit, it makes sense to collect it immediately since it's objectively a much better fuel than ice when you have it. You'd have to spend roughly 12x as much time mining and refining ice to get the same power. And offsetting the refining costs with renewable energy is much easier. When ore availability is not an issue, the small reactor is far better than the hydrogen engine.

[wedgedmouse]

I’ve always liked the hydrogen engine, usually used as back up power since you can find ice pretty much everywhere

[HairyHillman]

I did not notice that the custom controller had an always aim at sun option! Thank-you for this

[TheMNWolf]

I prefer reactors to hydrogen engines, but it is worth pointing out that you will be producing oxygen at the same time you produce hydrogen which may be a resource you needed anyway.

[agoddamnferret]

One thing severely lacking in SE for batteries is the ability to set discharge to specific blocks, like for instance if I have a small bank of railguns, I want to have batteries tied directly to them, so that I don't have to power the charge for them directly.

[Kasada]

It feels worth mentioning that nobody would *ever* put Uranium ore into a refinery that didn't have four Yield Modules attached - so realistically, you'd get 20kg of ingots from 1000kg of ore, rather than 10.

[arcanith]

I recently built a small grid hauler using atmospheric thrusters with a mixture of batteries and engines, the idea being the engines would allow the batteries to last longer. Works pretty alright, I did intentionally avoid hydrogen thrusters due to their big range of damage to grids, mainly with the design i went for too. Works well for ferrying goods between bases that are close by. Could be Way more better but its a fun experiment and giving different components adds to its beauty

[llusionist]

Large grids that are parked with magnetic plates onto voxels can produce power with windmills without having to convert to station BTW.

[comensee]

I like solar panels because it's aesthetically pleasing to look out and see a giant solar farm surrounding your base. Also, a trick I learned is you can double stack the panels to generate 2x the output during the day. If you want to make the panels automatically track the sun they do require extra work and resources. Hydrogen overall is the best source of electricity early-mid game because as long as you have a ready supply of ice you print out free electricity,

[ara]

2 things

One H2 generator produces exactly as much hydrogen as one engine consumes so you could run engines on just h2 generators and skip the tanks

Also imo the combination of reactors and engines works best as they reactors can take over the basic load and you can switch on the engine once the reactor runs out

[ChrMuslimThor]

The solar panels can be stacked in two layers. This is not known by most new engineers. Just flip it around when making your array and you'll be operating at 200% 😁

[JAY-fqsb]

I know that you didn't cover mods. I just wanted to put this out there. A few years ago I was trying to find an alternative for power. It was right after they stole uranium from the planets. (How unrealistic!)
So I found the Deuterium reactor mod. It uses stone and or ice to create deuterium containers for fuel (or both). There are large and small grid variants and they are POWERFUL. I do love the mod. There is also a positive thing about going to space. It's the only place to find pure deuterium deposits that is very rich when refined. So, the mod makes it very beneficial to go to space and has you actually looking to go there for that rich resource. Who doesn't want a 12GW reactor operating their base. All the power they would need FOREVER!

OH! They are NOT cheap to build! You better be ready to mine a bunch of gold and other rare stuff to get the special components to build one. These things are a beast to build. The bigger they are the more expensive they will cost you to build. So, cost will depend on how much you are willing to go mine. It will be a grind just to build the low level one. I think one of the lower tier one take 2000 of the special components and it also requires like 500 or so superconductors also. Be ready to grind for some recourses. This mod does put in a really nice power gen option, but you are not going to get it easy. You WILL WORK FOR IT!

[jarrod]

The wind turbine can be used on voxel locked subgrids, as well as static grids.
This means you can put one on a vehicle, and then using rotors and pistons, deploy it. Simple designs just rotate the subgrid with the turbine and landing gear on it, and then lower vehicle suspension until locked. It's great for mobile drills, where you will be voxel locking to deploy a drill anyways.

[Gottaculat]

Nuclear is absolutely king, especially when combined with a large battery chain.
My main ship is a power hog, as it has 30, YES, THIRTY jump drives (I can enter a server in space, and in 8-10 hours straight, get the mats and weld it by hand, believe it or not).
The ship has 62 batteries (2 for each JD, and 1 for general ship systems, and 1 backup battery set to recharge), and one large reactor.
The power output is bonkers (measured in Gigawatts), but it means I can jump >40, 000 KM in just 7 minutes 20 seconds if going full hog. It also eats uranium like a hobo wolfing down a ham sandwich, but I'm a jump addict, so it is what it is.

The ship itself is actually propelled with H2 thrusters, and some small ions for docking procedures to save on H2. 4 large H2 tanks, along with 8 emergency small H2 tanks. The emergency tanks are to power 2 H2 engines long enough to get me to some ice, or, in a pinch, provide fuel for an emergency landing in high G, assuming the 3 parachute hatches are damaged, empty, or there's no atmosphere.

The ship also has some solar panels, so you will never truly be dead in space when it comes to power. As long as you can find ice or uranium ore, the ship can process them into usable fuel.

Every power generation system has its uses, but yeah, the battery is the greatest, and nuclear is the best for charging batteries quickly. A pro you missed about wind turbines is you can use them in underground caves, making them the best cheap power source for stealth bases on planets with atmosphere.

BTW, if anyone is curious about the ship, the model a couple iterations behind my personal one (I'm on the Mk.VII) can be found here:
100% vanilla, with industrial smuggler theme. A mobile base among the stars.

[danielcox]

Battery power is not free, you had to take energy from somewhere and make the battery. The amount of power consumed should be factored in with the cost of the individual power generation blocks.