How do YOU Generate Power?

ShneekeyTheLost

Too Much Free Time
Dec 8, 2012
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Behold the brokenness of the MFR Lava Fabricator (viable through 1.7).

http://m.imgur.com/a/DtS0G
Gets even crazier with Big Reactors steam turbine. Five MFR steam boilers can run one max-size Turbine at 24kRF/t.

In 1.10.2, I've fallen in love with Deep Resonance. With the right materials, you can make a crystal with stupidly high stats to produce ridiculous RF/t. If you set it up properly, of course.
 
S

Sperwer

Guest
1.10.2 Unstable. Forestry treefarm for charcoal / ethanol production. Genetic modified saplings, fast leaf decay and greenhouse block from actually additions make it a bit OP. Had to use many powered gear blocks in the farm to make it keep up. 200 stills and still overproducing biomass and fruit juice.
 
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eloquentJane

Guest
I'm playing in 1.7.10 Infinity Evolved right now (since my computer can't handle 1.10.2 packs and I can't afford a new one). Power generation is expensive because I'm playing in expert mode.

I began with 8 survivalist generators (Extra Utilities) at a maximum of 40 RF/t. As soon as possible, I moved on to 6 water wheels (Immersive Engineering), which for some reason only provided 71 RF/t, but at least they did so without consumption of resources.

I recently set up a high pressure steam boiler with 18 industrial steam engines (Railcraft), which provides me with a constant 1440 RF/t thanks to a tree farm I set up (using Minefactory Reloaded). Rather than the more conventional decision to smelt the wood into charcoal, I instead use a sawmill to cut it into planks, in order to get 1800 ticks of burn time per log instead of 1600. This setup took a very long time to create because of my previous power generation, but was well worth doing, and I now have plenty of power to last me for quite a while.


All of the above was done in my first base, nothing more than a glorified hole in the ground composed of nine identical cells. I've now prepared the materials I will need to begin construction of my new base, which will eventually have several power sources:
  • The same steam boiler setup, which I will move to the new base as soon as everything is prepared and I have a sufficient backlog of wood to reheat the boiler. I'll upgrade to several steam boilers after a while, all of which will be contained in a dedicated blast-protected room and pipe their steam to the engines elsewhere. The necessary tree farm expansion will be the limiting factor in the amount of steam boilers I decide to go with (probably three).
  • A fairly sizable solar farm (Solar Expansion). I won't go above hardened solar panels with this base, but I want to start working towards having some renewable power.
  • Several diesel generators (Immersive Engineering). Rather than having them be renewable at this point, I will instead make use of the plentiful oil deposits around my world. This does somewhat limit the power I can get from them, but it should not pose much of an issue because they'll mainly only be used for high-power systems at the end of the mid-game, such as the ender quarry.
  • A single nuclear reactor (Industrialcraft 2), producing 420 eu/t or 168 RF/t. I am including it in this list only because it does generate power, but the amount it generates is so small that it will only exist as a means of acquiring plutonium.

Eventually I will have another base, with an external design somewhat inspired by the Imperial security complex in Star Wars: Rogue One. This will contain my end-game power supply:
  • 9 nuclear reactors (Industrialcraft 2), producing a total of 3780 eu/t or 1512 RF/t. Again, they will be my plutonium production rather than a substantial proportion of my power generation. The reactor design that I am using will mean that the collective product of the reactors will be 28 plutonium per fuel rod cycle (2.78 hours), and the process is fully automatable and cannot result in explosion. Regardless, they will be encapsulated within several layers of highly blast-resistant material. I will not go through the effort of making liquid-cooled reactors, since they will still not be a major contribution to my power supply.
  • A nether star generator (Extra Utilities), probably. Perhaps multiple nether star generators. Only if I can find a good way to automate nether star acquisition though.
  • A powerful backup solar farm (Solar Expansion). I will use many of the highest tier of solar panels, as many as is needed to provide auxiliary power to my base. In the event that all non-reusable power sources are exhausted, the solar farm will need to be able to run the core of the AE system (all item access, no autocrafting other than what's necessary for disaster prevention), any containment systems and protection systems, all emergency measures (lighting, alarms, and the like), as well as one ender quarry (for maintaining some intake of resources whilst power is low). I'll then double this number of solar panels so that the system can accumulate enough power to run at night.
  • Numerous yellorium reactors and steam turbines (Big Reactors). They are extraordinarily expensive in expert mode (which makes sense because usually they're somewhat overpowered), so I won't be able to have as many as some people might like to make. I'll probably limit myself to 8 maximum-efficiency turbines and enough reactors to efficiently power them.
  • Several 64x culinary generators (Extra Utilities) powered by various food (mainly from Pam's Harvestcraft, supplied by Minefactory Reloaded harvesters farming Agricraft crops). This setup will exist so that I have an excuse to grow all the crops.

I believe that is all, but I may draw from other sources of energy too. That will depend upon how well I can enact my plans in-game. I have a good enough understanding of costs and progression in this pack that the above planning should be fairly sound, but it's quite possible that I might end up using more power than I have anticipated.

And if my end-game generation is too much, there is of course always the option to store excess power in an enormous glowing orb. -J
 
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CyborgTinkerer

Guest
I use botania's vinculotus in the end to attract endermen and farm them then I use my fel pumpkin blaze farm to turn the ender pearls in to eyes of ender and then use an endergenic generator thingy from extra utillities to create infinite power
 

ShneekeyTheLost

Too Much Free Time
Dec 8, 2012
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Lately, I've been enjoying Immersive Engineering for my power needs.

To start off with, a basic Kinetic Dynamo with a regular windmill blade. It's about the only one in the mod you can make without steel, which is gated behind the Blast Furnace.

Once you get to the Nether, and upgrade your Blast Furnace, water wheels were the flavor of the day. With three water wheels on a single dynamo, I can crank out roughly 70 RF/t passively, if it is set up right. Three or four of those set up, and you've got your basic power gen.

Then, once you continue to progress, there's the Diesel Generator that runs on Biodiesel. At 4k RF/t, it's a powerhouse, but it has a tendency to chug fuel at an alarming rate, particularly when it is 'stuttering'. Each start/stop consumes a full bucket. So use EnderIO's Power Monitor to tell it don't run unless capacitor bank is under 50%, and don't stop until it's around 95%.

I'm probably going to add a few advanced windmills just for the fun, up in the corner towers of my castle.
 

JaRyCu

Well-Known Member
Sep 29, 2015
274
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South Georgia, USA
In my LP for Unstoppable, I've stuck exclusively with Environmental Tech Solar Arrays. I've currently got a Tier 2 array and 2x Tier 4 arrays. The RF is being stored in a gigantic Ender IO capacitor bank that holds close to 4B RF. Each of the Tier 4s outputs 50K+ RF/t, and I have them modded so they produce some RF during rain and storms as well.

I just checked before I hit 'post reply' to see if I had any screenshots, and I don't. I've been hitting F2 a lot less since I started recording. In the episodes where I build and/or upgrade the arrays, I do go into detail and show the viewer exactly how it's done, though.
 

HSIkMy

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
52
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I'm playing in 1.7.10 Infinity Evolved right now (since my computer can't handle 1.10.2 packs and I can't afford a new one). Power generation is expensive because I'm playing in expert mode.

I began with 8 survivalist generators (Extra Utilities) at a maximum of 40 RF/t. As soon as possible, I moved on to 6 water wheels (Immersive Engineering), which for some reason only provided 71 RF/t, but at least they did so without consumption of resources.

I recently set up a high pressure steam boiler with 18 industrial steam engines (Railcraft), which provides me with a constant 1440 RF/t thanks to a tree farm I set up (using Minefactory Reloaded). Rather than the more conventional decision to smelt the wood into charcoal, I instead use a sawmill to cut it into planks, in order to get 1800 ticks of burn time per log instead of 1600. This setup took a very long time to create because of my previous power generation, but was well worth doing, and I now have plenty of power to last me for quite a while.


All of the above was done in my first base, nothing more than a glorified hole in the ground composed of nine identical cells. I've now prepared the materials I will need to begin construction of my new base, which will eventually have several power sources:
  • The same steam boiler setup, which I will move to the new base as soon as everything is prepared and I have a sufficient backlog of wood to reheat the boiler. I'll upgrade to several steam boilers after a while, all of which will be contained in a dedicated blast-protected room and pipe their steam to the engines elsewhere. The necessary tree farm expansion will be the limiting factor in the amount of steam boilers I decide to go with (probably three).
  • A fairly sizable solar farm (Solar Expansion). I won't go above hardened solar panels with this base, but I want to start working towards having some renewable power.
  • Several diesel generators (Immersive Engineering). Rather than having them be renewable at this point, I will instead make use of the plentiful oil deposits around my world. This does somewhat limit the power I can get from them, but it should not pose much of an issue because they'll mainly only be used for high-power systems at the end of the mid-game, such as the ender quarry.
  • A single nuclear reactor (Industrialcraft 2), producing 420 eu/t or 168 RF/t. I am including it in this list only because it does generate power, but the amount it generates is so small that it will only exist as a means of acquiring plutonium.

Eventually I will have another base, with an external design somewhat inspired by the Imperial security complex in Star Wars: Rogue One. This will contain my end-game power supply:
  • 9 nuclear reactors (Industrialcraft 2), producing a total of 3780 eu/t or 1512 RF/t. Again, they will be my plutonium production rather than a substantial proportion of my power generation. The reactor design that I am using will mean that the collective product of the reactors will be 28 plutonium per fuel rod cycle (2.78 hours), and the process is fully automatable and cannot result in explosion. Regardless, they will be encapsulated within several layers of highly blast-resistant material. I will not go through the effort of making liquid-cooled reactors, since they will still not be a major contribution to my power supply.
  • A nether star generator (Extra Utilities), probably. Perhaps multiple nether star generators. Only if I can find a good way to automate nether star acquisition though.
  • A powerful backup solar farm (Solar Expansion). I will use many of the highest tier of solar panels, as many as is needed to provide auxiliary power to my base. In the event that all non-reusable power sources are exhausted, the solar farm will need to be able to run the core of the AE system (all item access, no autocrafting other than what's necessary for disaster prevention), any containment systems and protection systems, all emergency measures (lighting, alarms, and the like), as well as one ender quarry (for maintaining some intake of resources whilst power is low). I'll then double this number of solar panels so that the system can accumulate enough power to run at night.
  • Numerous yellorium reactors and steam turbines (Big Reactors). They are extraordinarily expensive in expert mode (which makes sense because usually they're somewhat overpowered), so I won't be able to have as many as some people might like to make. I'll probably limit myself to 8 maximum-efficiency turbines and enough reactors to efficiently power them.
  • Several 64x culinary generators (Extra Utilities) powered by various food (mainly from Pam's Harvestcraft, supplied by Minefactory Reloaded harvesters farming Agricraft crops). This setup will exist so that I have an excuse to grow all the crops.

I believe that is all, but I may draw from other sources of energy too. That will depend upon how well I can enact my plans in-game. I have a good enough understanding of costs and progression in this pack that the above planning should be fairly sound, but it's quite possible that I might end up using more power than I have anticipated.

And if my end-game generation is too much, there is of course always the option to store excess power in an enormous glowing orb. -J
IC2 Generator is an extremely cheap and underrated choice that generates 10 EU/t, and with IE cables you can easily convert it into 40 RF/t. Once you get a MFR tree farm you can spam them and automate your power supply. One wood log -> 6 planks in the sawmill -> 12 agricraft irrigation channels, which provide the same fuel value as wooden planks.
(Unrelated: in 1.10.2 if Quark is in your pack, you can craft 6 planks into 8 stairs to increase the fuel value. Certain mods will have slabs that give the same fuel as planks, so if you use these wood you can double your fuel)
 
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eloquentJane

Guest
IC2 Generator is an extremely cheap and underrated choice that generates 10 EU/t, and with IE cables you can easily convert it into 40 RF/t.

These generators would've been a good option in the beginning, but are not powerful enough even for the point I'm currently at, which is still quite early in the tech tree for this modpack. Also, 10 EU/t is not equivalent to 40 RF/t, it's equivalent to 25 RF/t (unless conversion rates are different in Infinity Evolved expert mode). And in any case, I greatly prefer devices that generate RF directly, mainly because I generally prefer RF-based mods, but also because the most you can ever get from a single EU generator in Industrialcraft (without melting the glass fiber cables (and yes I know that's still not implemented but it's supposed to be)) is 8192 EU/t or 3276.8 RF/t (which comes from an extremely dangerous reactor that I don't know of any safe and automatable designs for), whilst the upper limit for RF generation does not appear to exist.
 

Pyure

Not Totally Useless
Aug 14, 2013
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because the most you can ever get from a single EU generator in Industrialcraft (without melting the glass fiber cables (and yes I know that's still not implemented but it's supposed to be)) is 8192 EU/t or 3276.8 RF/t (which comes from an extremely dangerous reactor that I don't know of any safe and automatable designs for), whilst the upper limit for RF generation does not appear to exist.
EloquentJane, how are you getting your EU versus RF numbers for your reactors?

Generally speaking, you'll get approximately 3.5 or 4 RF for every EU. So if you're producing 1000 eu/t, you can translate that to ~4000 rf/t unless your conversion method itself is inherently lossy.

If you're trying to do that conversion via Immersive Engineering cables (in 1.7.10), there is maximum throughput on those cables which start to bottleneck you once you get to nuclear-level throughputs. If you want this power in RF, a workaround is to use multiple cable connections instead of a single connection.
 
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eloquentJane

Guest
@Pyure I went back to the sources that said that (the main one was the FTB forum) and it seems that I was mistaken about the conversion rates by a factor of 10. I misread the Minecraft Joules (Buildcraft's old power system) rate for the Redstone Flux one. That means that rather than 5 EU being equal to 2 RF, it's equal to 20 RF. That's actually quite good because it means that my IC2 reactors will be far more powerful than anticipated, though I might need to rethink my power plans accordingly. I'm still not going to use the IC2 generators though, because I'd need 36 of them to keep up with a single Railcraft steam boiler setup (which is my current power system), and 42 of them to keep up with just one of the eventual nine IC2 reactors (which will still only end up being a small fraction of my power supply once I get my endgame big reactor setup running).
 

Pyure

Not Totally Useless
Aug 14, 2013
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Waterloo, Ontario
@Pyure I went back to the sources that said that (the main one was the FTB forum) and it seems that I was mistaken about the conversion rates by a factor of 10. I misread the Minecraft Joules (Buildcraft's old power system) rate for the Redstone Flux one. That means that rather than 5 EU being equal to 2 RF, it's equal to 20 RF. That's actually quite good because it means that my IC2 reactors will be far more powerful than anticipated, though I might need to rethink my power plans accordingly. I'm still not going to use the IC2 generators though, because I'd need 36 of them to keep up with a single Railcraft steam boiler setup (which is my current power system), and 42 of them to keep up with just one of the eventual nine IC2 reactors (which will still only end up being a small fraction of my power supply once I get my endgame big reactor setup running).
I wouldn't use them either. You're already past the point where they're at all beneficial (they're the entry-level generator for IC2)

What are you trying to accomplish? Short version; I couldn't get through your big post above.
 

KingTriaxx

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Jul 27, 2013
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Railcraft has a Steam Turbine that produces EU, at 200/t, which is a pretty good bang for your buck if you only need a bit of power boost.

Personally I always found Big Reactor Turbines run off of Railcraft Steam to be sufficient for most of my needs. Though I am aware power requirements were jacked up insanely for Expert mode.
 
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eloquentJane

Guest
What are you trying to accomplish?

The main purpose of that big post was really just an answer to the question posed by the title of the thread. It's an outline of how I am currently generating power and how I plan to in future in my current playthrough.
 

Nedrith

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
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My current base in all the mods expert is being powered by a combination of Empowered Oil in a Advanced Generator turbine giving me 3k Rf/T and also powering my IC2 machines, A Calculator Locator which is giving me 6.8rf/t and until recently the majority of my power storage and I recently added an extreme reactor to the mix for another 6k rf/t because I need the cyanite to make octadic capacitors in this modpack. Added a tier 3 draconic power storage system for a buffer recently.

Overall prefer Gregtech power generation methods, in particular the changes that gregtech made to IC2's fluid cooled nuclear reactor to make hot coolant worth a ton more power along with adding in a very large heat exchanger and turbine to make using all that hot coolant a lot simpler.
 

KingTriaxx

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I have a love/hate relationship with GregTech. I love a lot of the things it does, but several other things annoy me too much to get to the good things I like.
 

APEX_gaming

Well-Known Member
Jul 23, 2017
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in FTB beyond, after the initial coal/sterling generators, I used Garden cloches to make canola oil (my set up gave me about 276 rf/t subtracting the cloches power loss) I then went to an environmental tech tier 2 solar array which gave about 4k RF/t, I then went and used more cloches to make a biodiesel plant using industrial hemp and potatoes, that gave me another 4k RF/t. after that I went head first into power production and made a stack of nehter star generators, being powered by the purely absurd number or starts i'm getting from my woot farm (4/second if I remember correctly)
 

ShneekeyTheLost

Too Much Free Time
Dec 8, 2012
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In 1.10.2, and I believe going forward as well, Thermal Expansion's Steam Dynamo can have an Augment that will significantly increase it's RF/t output, but must have steam piped in from an external source. Combine with MFR's Steam Boilers, and you have a transition from early to mid-game power. Start off with a couple of steam dynamos, just to get you going. Then upgrade with Hardened then Reinforced, slot in the steam augment and the one that increases RF/t at the cost of more fuel, and you're looking at around 1kRF/t produced from the system, and I think the boiler can accommodate at least four, maybe five Steam Dynamos.

Granted, it isn't Big Reactor's steam turbine multiblock that produces 24k RF/t, but it is also scaled down and far cheaper as a transitional power source from 'whatever I can throw together to at least get me started' to a final endgame power generation source. It has really given Steam dynamos a new lease on life, and makes them very viable until well into your mid to late game stages.
 

WTFFFS

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Jul 29, 2019
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My most recent world (Beyond) power progression was,
20 peat engines fed by a full size forestry peat bog --> 20 slime generators fed by Ender IO farm with slimy saplings (and one very poor sucked dry cow) ---> RAINBOWS AND MOTHAFUKIN' LIGHTNING BITCHES (permanently running Rainbow Gen and 4 Enviro tech lightning rods filled my tier 7 Draconic energy ball pretty quickly)

RF values 400->8000->25,000,000 + 32,000,000\strike (in storms I'd get anywhere from 12-30 strikes)
 
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