Wood Burner

The Wood Burner is a small, easy-to-maintain power building that burns Lumber for electricity. It is effectively a dirtier and less efficient Coal Generator that happens to use a renewable fuel source instead of Coal, so many of the same power-planning concerns apply: it is simple to use, but it produces a fair amount of heat and can waste fuel quickly if left unattended.

Because its fuel comes from Arbor Trees, a Wood Burner fits naturally into lumber-based industrial setups and early renewable power chains. A wild Arbor Tree produces up to 138.8 g/s of Lumber, while a domesticated tree produces up to 555.5 g/s, meaning it takes about 8.65 wild trees or 2.17 domesticated trees to keep one Wood Burner running continuously. That makes it a practical option when a colony has a reliable wood supply and wants power without relying on finite minerals.

The building can hold 360 kg of Lumber and can generate 90 kJ of energy before needing to be refilled, enough to charge 2 Jumbo Batteries. For that reason, it should not be left to run unsupervised without automation or careful oversight, since it will happily consume large amounts of fuel for relatively modest output.

A few useful details and interactions:

• Wood Burners produce a significant amount of heat despite their compact size, so they are often better placed where heat is already being managed.
• They start effectively deleting heat from the lumber’s temperature above 6 °C. Burning hotter lumber improves the effect: lumber at 30 °C erases about 80% of its heat, and lumber at 100 °C erases about 94%.
• Even so, this is not strong enough to meaningfully offset the heat-multiplying effects of Arbor Trees on its own. Keeping trees in a colder environment can still help, especially if the lumber is preheated before burning.
• Since the fuel is renewable, the Wood Burner can serve as a bridge between tree farming and broader power infrastructure, but its output and heat make it a temporary or supplemental solution rather than a perfect long-term base power source.
• It can also be used to support Slickster ranches by providing extra power in cold environments, helping prevent Slicksters from starving or turning into oxygen-eating Longhair Slicksters. In ranches like this, the burner is useful for managing colony byproducts and temperature together, though Slicksters are generally better viewed as a way to consume excess Carbon Dioxide than as a dedicated Petroleum production method.