Solar Panels are a fine way to generate initial power for a small, new base… while the sun is up… provided you’re not too far from the surface. Giving between 1-8 power generation depending on the conditions, you’re probably going to want something a little more stable for your larger bases - anything that’s going to have Processors running, batteries charging a Tadpole docked or any of that good stuff. A more reliable, higher output source of power for your base is the Hydroelectric Turbine, and this page will discuss how to obtain the blueprint and materials necessary to create them in Subnautica 2!
Page Breakdown¶
| Quick Search |
|---|
| Find Hydroelectric Turbine Blueprints |
| How to Build Hydroelectric Turbines |
| Crafting and Placing Power Transmitters |
Find Hydroelectric Turbine Blueprints¶
As with most things, you won’t immediately know how to build a Hydroelectric Turbine. Instead you’ll need to find nonfunctional specimens in the ruins left behind by your predecessors and scan enough of those until you’re able to reverse engineer how to craft them. Below you’ll find several locations of scannable Hydroelectric Turbines:
You can find a Hydroelectric Turbine on a platform near a current north, northeast of Camp One,
while if you follow the nearby current you’ll find a second Hydroelectric Turbine on another platform!
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Around 270 meters north, northeast of the Lifepod you’ll find the ruins of Camp One. North, northeast of Camp One you’ll find a current, beyond which is a platform on the sea floor. You’ll find a scannable Hydroelectric Turbine on this platform. This is roughly 355 meters north, northeast of the Lifepod (between 15 and 30 degrees), about 30 meters under the surface.
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From the platform listed above, follow the current (don’t try to swim against it - you can’t make headway, so swim alongside it, instead) and you’ll find another platform on the seafloor. There just so happens to be another Hydroelectric Turbine propped by by a metal frame on this platform. If it sounds too good to be true, it’s not - this platform is different from the last one, and you’ll find it roughly 390 meter north, northeast of the Lifepod, 160 meters north, northeast of Camp One.
A Hydroelectric Turbine scan can be found on a platform on the seafloor near some Cicada ruins.
- You need to look for a platform on the seafloor about 260 meters east, northeast of the Lifepod (60 degrees). This isn’t easy to see without exploring thoroughly, as it’s under a rocky overhang and near a current, and the platform itself is about 60 meters underwater. This scan can be found in a crate near (but not on) the platform. There’s also a Tadpole scan and a [Power Cell Terminal] scan nearby.
Search a crate-covered ledge near the Old Habitat for another Hydroelectric Turbine scan.
- 400 or so meters north of the Life Pod you’ll find the Old Habitat ruins, which you’ll be directed to explore some time after scouring Camp One (the Old Habitat is, for the record, is 180 meters north, northwest of Camp One). Once you reach the Old Habitat search a crate-covered ledge to the south to find this Hydroelectric Turbine scan lying around. There will be a current running nearby, so this should be a hard scan to miss.
Find the Great Jaw near Colonist Bunker (Unauthorized NoA Modification),
and search the ground for a Hydroelectric Turbine.
- Many Hydroelectric Turbine scans can be found near Camp One, but a familiar treasure trove of scans and blueprints - Cicada ruins and Great Jaw near the Colonist Bunker (Unauthorized NOA Modification) also hides a Hydroelectric Turbine scan. From the Lifepod, swim 70 meters southeast to find the Welcome Center ruins, then from there look out for some Cicada remnants to the south, southwest (210 degrees). Follow scraps of this wreckage down a slope to the west to reach a rubble-strewn stone ledge about 90 meters below the surface. You can find a Tadpole scan here, which can serve as a landmark of sorts - this is roughly 140 meters south of the Lifepod. From here turn southeast and follow a narrow stone ledge to find more bits of Cicada wreckage. Mingled with this debris you’ll find a Hydroelectric Turbine you can scan on the ground. This is around 180 meters south and ever-so-slightly-east of the Lifepod.
How to Build Hydroelectric Turbines¶
While being a fair bit more expensive than Solar Panels, Hydroelectric Turbines aren’t terribly hard to create - requiring 3x Titanium, 3x Copper and 3x Silver. You can find Titanium just about everywhere, Copper is often found in caves, while Silver is mostly found in a cave below Camp One (the entrance to this cave is southwest and below the ground Camp One is built on - check out the linked page for more information). Once you’ve left the first biome, Silver deposits become more common, often appearing in large deposits that require the Sonic Resonator to harvest.
The real trick to using Hydroelectric Turbines is that you need to build them in currents - water flow is how they generate power, after all. Currents must be natural, and while this limits where you can build Hydroelectric Turbines, it’s also a stable, infinite source of power that requires no maintenance or fuel to keep generating. As Subnautica 2 expands past its early access phase, you may have to turn to other power sources, but at least in the biomes available at launch, there were always currents around in places worth building bases. When you’re using your Habitat Builder to place the blueprint for a Hydroelectric Turbine, keep an eye on the number above it - if it says 0, it won’t generate any power where it’s placed. If it says 12, it will operate fully. You can place numerous Hydroelectric Turbines in the same current, even right next to each other, so you can easily generate as much power as you need, provided a current is nearby.
Crafting and Placing Power Transmitters¶
There is one other complication when it comes to using Hydroelectric Turbines - they cannot transmit power to your base on their own. With a Solar Panel, you just plop on (or more) on the roof and you’re good, but to get the power generated by your Hydroelectric Turbines to your base, you’ll need to use Power Transmitters. These cost 1x Titanium and 1x Copper, so they’re fairly trivial to produce, and each one has a fair range. When you craft or move a Power Transmitter, you should see a green line connecting it to anything that generates or transmits power nearby, including Hydroelectric Turbines and other Power Transmitters. This indicates that power is flowing between them, and you need to have at least one Power Transmitter attached to your base to transfer power from the Hydroelectric Turbine(s) to your base. This is a bit of a chore, but on the plus side you can daisy-chain Power Transmitters in a line to transmit power over distances. You’ll still need a current to generate power with Hydroelectric Turbines, but you don’t necessarily need to build your base right next to said current if you’re willing to build a few Power Transmitters!
All in all, Hydroelectric Turbines are relatively cheap, build-and-forget sources of power that just generate power reliably, and they were enough to get us through all of the game’s early access build!
Nathan has been working at Gamer Guides since 2014 where he started as a contributor. He came on as an editor in 2020 where he continues to put his excellent knowledge of most things RPG to use. More about Nathan Garvin
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