What is the benefit of storing water in tank instead of driving it directly into boilers and steam engines?
Factorio Water Storage – Benefits and Uses
factorio
Related Topic
- Factorio – How Accumulators Factor Into the Power Grid
- Factorio – How Many Water Pumps Can Fill a Single Pipe Channel?
- Factorio – Why Steam Engine Fails to Run
- Factorio – How to Keep Steam Turbines Running at Maximum Performance Using Nuclear Power
- Factorio – Recipe for Steam from Boilers and Heat Exchangers
- Factorio – Types of Equipment that Work When Driving a Spidertron in Factorio
Best Answer
My old answer still holds true for 0.14 Factorio and earlier, but the new steam mechanics introduced in 0.15 and up change the rules drastically.
There is, however, still a use case for storing water in tanks, and that's for buffer purposes.
Especially later on you may wind up migrating to a hybrid solar and steam setup for your power usage; in those cases, the draw on your steam engines and/or turbines will be significantly higher at night time. By using tanks to store water and/or heated steam during the daytime you can guarantee a steady supply at night when the draw might otherwise exceed the capacity of your pipe network.