Big reactor: automate turbine

[Flipside]

So I know how to control the rods using rednet with out a turbine but there is no rednet controller for the turbine.

Anyone have any clever ways to control the turbine/reactor setup so it's not wasting fuel.

 

[MacAisling]

I just turn the reactor itself on & off based on stored energy. EnderIO has a block that makes it dead easy.

 

[Lordlundar]

Eh, I find the Turbine setup is really best suited for when you need a lot of steady power rather than the "max out and stop" setup. There is a considerable spin up time on the turbines that, as far as I'm concerned makes the stop/start approach largely inefficient.

 

[epidemia78]

So I know how to control the rods using rednet with out a turbine but there is no rednet controller for the turbine.

Anyone have any clever ways to control the turbine/reactor setup so it's not wasting fuel.

Yeah. The whole point of turbines is so you can leave them on all the time. You just have to build your reactor in such a way that it uses as little fuel as possible and once you do that it will burn so slowly you really wont need to worry about it. My turbine has been going for days and days off a few stacks of yellorite and theres still more. 10,000 of the 13k RF I am making goes directly into the MFR mining laser I have set up. The rest gets stored up or wasted. Im not worried about the waste, I always have 30mil RF in backup.

 

[Celestialphoenix]

If you have a way to convert energy into fuel, then its a fairly good way to dump excess power and recycle it as needed.

 

[DorinnB]

If you have a way to convert energy into fuel, then its a fairly good way to dump excess power and recycle it as needed.

mining laser with yellow focus will generate more yellorium than used.

At least in every packed I've played if you have a "god" reactor (low consumtion)

 

[MacAisling]

I really only need the 20K rf/t I'm producing when I'm running an ender quarry, which produces an insane amount of material very quickly with the silk touch & speed 3 upgrades. The bigger I make my capacitor bank, the less often my reactor will have to run, making the spin-up time a marginal concern.

 

[Skyqula]

I dont think its currently possible to throttle down a turbine like you can a reactor using redstone. The most you can do is put the reactor to a lower output mode and disengage the coils to keep them spinning with a low power requirement or lower the steam consumption of the turbine. Unless I am mistaken this is currently only automatable with computer craft. The next mayor update for BR will likely have a redstone port for the turbine. That will hopefully open up some options!

 

[steve g]

you can automate their controls, but with a CC turtle and the computer port on the turbine. you can have it disengage rotors to spin up faster and engage again to produce rf. i had a setup where my turbines couldnt spin up enough to hit the 1800 mark, so i had to use the turtle/io ports to control the turbine speed. code was really simple (assuming turtle is facing you with its back to the turbine computer port):

turbine = peripheral.wrap("back")

while true do
   speed = turbine.getRotorSpeed()

   if speed > 1850 then
      -- slow the turbine down, generate RF
      turbine.setInductorEngaged(true)
   end

   if speed < 1820 then
      -- disengage rotors so they spin up again
      turbine.setInductorEngaged(false)
   end

   sleep(0.5)
end

note this code is for keeping the turbine running at a little over 1800 rpm...im not sure how you would tie this in to your reactor to save fuel...perhaps monitor the internal rf levels and wire the turtle to rednet signal on the reactor?