Well there is three things you could do for power. One would be solar's and would be decently easy right up until a meteor shower. Two would be a smaller singularity generator, you can actually make the current one half the size but still as effective if not more if you made a room with the singularity in the middle as a l2 singularity (2x2 size) with a building going around the outside of it containing radiation collectors on each side as opposed to the current 1 side only. You'd then want a few extra layers of armor around the whole construct and you'd end up with a generator taking up slightly less space then the current, but overall more effective. The last would be pacman generator based, and just hope that mining doesn't suck balls and can get you lots of plasma. That or have a fucking lot of SMES's so you can make sure to store ALL the energy you don't use, until more plasma arrives.
Want to know something funny? I though of all those, In that order. And I ended up going with the Pacman Generator. Mainly because R&D should be teaming with mining and it will force them to be together even more.
Careful. The PACMAN generators are coded to both break down and overheat. Overheating causes explosions. Both upgrades to the generator require upgraded materials as well, although you can use upgraded base components to increase its stats, so I suppose it's not too bad. The SUPERPACMAN uses uranium for energy, and rather cleverly, the MRSPACMAN uses diamonds.
The regular PACMAN only has 5000 base power, but it seems to fluctuate depending on the reliability of the PACMAN and the quality of its components. You can set it to more power output, but that definitely increases the heat gain.
This is just from what I'm reading in the code, though. I should probably try messing around with the generator in-game.
Also, please do not force R&D to work with mining. It's not fun for anybody when half of your potential job is cut off just so teamwork is enforced. Scientists end up sitting on their asses half the time, or miners end up sitting on wasted plasma half the time because one or the other is busy and/or incompetent. I mean, yes, generally, I see more teamwork on Urist McStation, but things happen. Not to mention that the low server-pop means that you might not get people to do certain jobs.
Actually, a possible alternative is slime-fuel generation. If you give a bunch of plasma for research station to start off with, you can have the scientists make dark purple slimes. One dark purple slime core creates a 10-sheet stack of plasma when injected with 5 units of plasma. I might be able to create another sub-type of slime for uranium generation, too, branching off the dark purple sub-type path. I just noticed this, but slimes are not able to revert back to previous slimes. Purple slimes cannot become grey slimes, which seems kinda silly to me, and all the later forms like adamantine, black, etc. are unable to become any other sub-type.