Best Way To Power A Quarry?

[Tyler Shellberg]

Simple as the title says. I'm currently powering my Quarry with a single Stirling Generator with a Octadic Capacitor. (That's 80 RF/tick)

I'm looking to make it go significantly faster.
My only idea so far is to go to the nether, pump out lava, and use it to power dozens of Magmatic Dynamos. I've done that in the past, but it's a pain in the ass to find a good sized lava lake, put down the pump, make the tesseracts, etc, etc. Plus, it may end up running out of lava sooner than I think.

I'm relatively early game. I have a basic AE system for storage (an ad-hock network) and a MFR single rubber tree farm to get myself lots of charcoal.

 

[Xygen8]

Assuming you have plenty of charcoal and also have a way to make steel, you could use a Railcraft Steam Boiler to produce steam and pipe it into MFR Steam Turbines. A 3x3x2 HP boiler is enough to run 4 turbines at max power (160 RF/t each, or a total of 640 RF/t). Or you could use a Big Reactor. A 4x4 actively cooled reactor with 4 fuel rods (two stacks of two rods, in opposite corners) produces enough steam to run 8 turbines, for a total of 1280 RF/t. Fill it completely with fuel rods and that'll go up to 18 turbines and 2880 RF/t. Or just craft a crapload of Steam Dynamos, those produce 80 RF/t each when supplied with water and fuel.

E: Apparently MFR also has a steam boiler block, so that's another option.

 

[Tyler Shellberg]

Assuming you have plenty of charcoal and also have a way to make steel, you could use a Railcraft Steam Boiler to produce steam and pipe it into MFR Steam Turbines. A 3x3x2 HP boiler is enough to run 4 turbines at max power (160 RF/t each, or a total of 640 RF/t). Or you could use a Big Reactor. A 4x4 actively cooled reactor with 4 fuel rods (two stacks of two rods, in opposite corners) produces enough steam to run 8 turbines, for a total of 1280 RF/t. Fill it completely with fuel rods and that'll go up to 18 turbines and 2880 RF/t. Or just craft a crapload of Steam Dynamos, those produce 80 RF/t each when supplied with water and fuel.

E: Apparently MFR also has a steam boiler block, so that's another option.

Where exactly do these "turbines" come from if I'm going the Railcraft Steam Boiler route?

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

Where exactly do these "turbines" come from if I'm going the Railcraft Steam Boiler route?

Big Reactors

 

[Type1Ninja]

Big Reactors

I think @Xygen8 meant MFR Turbines, but the Big Reactor turbines are far superior. They're also significantly more expensive.
Pretty much any early game power is good for a quarry; they're not that resource intensive. Your tree farm is probably the best way to go, as if you upgrade it a little and automate the creation and burning of charcoal then you get a large surplus of power.

 

[Xygen8]

Where exactly do these "turbines" come from if I'm going the Railcraft Steam Boiler route?

Basically, you have three big mods, each of which has a way to turn water to steam, and a way to generate power using that steam. These are:

- Railcraft. You need lots of steel for the turbines, and also for the boiler if you want to build a high pressure one. Low pressure boilers are made with iron. Boilers also take a long time to warm up and consume a ton of fuel when warming up, but they're quite efficient once they've reached maximum temperature.

- Big Reactors. Semi-cheap nuclear reactors and turbines (mostly requires iron, coal and yellorite, some redstone, a single diamond for the controller block etc). Easily expandable so that it produces several hundred thousand RF/t. This is my personal favourite, but like @Type1Ninja said, the turbines, while not "expensive" as such, do require quite a lot of materials.

- MineFactory Reloaded. Good for when you don't have much space - unlike Railcraft and Big Reactors, MFR boilers and turbines are not multiblock structures. They're cheap, too, only requiring very basic materials.

Now, these are all compatible with each other, so if you have two or more of them installed, you can use the boiler from one mod and a turbine from another. I've heard 5 MFR boilers are enough to drive a max size Big Reactors turbine, producing more than 20k RF/t.

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

I think @Xygen8 meant MFR Turbines, but the Big Reactor turbines are far superior. They're also significantly more expensive.
Pretty much any early game power is good for a quarry; they're not that resource intensive. Your tree farm is probably the best way to go, as if you upgrade it a little and automate the creation and burning of charcoal then you get a large surplus of power.

Ah, wasn't aware of the MFR turbines... They would probably be easier.

But OP, the easiest route BY FAR I've found of powering an early game quarry is with lava route. The augment system in Thermal Expansion means you can get 340RF/t(ish) out of a magmatic dynamo. 10 of those and you can run an unupgraded ender quarry and processing system easily.

 

[Shattered box]

On my quarry I have a big reactor and it flies it's awesome

 

[Keserian]

Generally, I'm a huge fan of Railcraft, but moving boiler setups is a remarkable pain. If you don't mind burning lots of resources, you could use EnderIO photovoltaic cells, but those are space intensive and pricey. Generally, I don't build a quarry until after I have a fairly robust base power system, and I just plug into a tesseract with either a Thermal Expansion Cell or EnderIO capacitor to limit the power flow.

 

[mattp_12]

This is pretty irrelevant, but right now I don't have the "ender tank technologies", (so close! Need one more blaze rod!) and I'm using an enervation Dynamo to power my quarry. I don't know why. It's a HUGE waste of redstone early game.

 

[Zarkov]

The smallest Big Reactor possible (3x3x3) gives 260 (280?) RF/t and is very quick to build (and move), and uses very little yellorium. Once you have tesseracts, you can make it bigger (and less mobile). You don't need any turbines for the reactor. They increase the efficiency a lot, but if you already have 100k RF/t and run a speed II upgraded ender quarry, it doesn't really matter.

 

[malicious_bloke]

Fission reactor -> HP turbine -> Induction generator -> Auroral battery -> Induction motor -> ACME bank of rotational dynamos -> Quarry

Oh how I wish the quarry would just keep scaling up the speed with more powah...

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

Oh how I wish the quarry would just keep scaling up the speed with more powah...

Your CPU disagrees with you

 

[Ieldra]

This is pretty irrelevant, but right now I don't have the "ender tank technologies", (so close! Need one more blaze rod!) and I'm using an enervation Dynamo to power my quarry. I don't know why. It's a HUGE waste of redstone early game.

Do you have blaze powder (some non-blaze mobs drop it)? I'm not sure if it's a modpack-specific recipe, but I find IC2's compressor can make blaze rods from blaze powder.

 

[Keserian]

Fission reactor -> HP turbine -> Induction generator -> Auroral battery -> Induction motor -> ACME bank of rotational dynamos -> Quarry

Oh how I wish the quarry would just keep scaling up the speed with more powah...

At that point it's probably easier to just use MFR laser drills.

 

[malicious_bloke]

At that point it's probably easier to just use MFR laser drills.

How many laser drills with all four prechargers could you fit into a 64x64 square?

Just wondering~?

 

[mattp_12]

Do you have blaze powder (some non-blaze mobs drop it)? I'm not sure if it's a modpack-specific recipe, but I find IC2's compressor can make blaze rods from blaze powder.

You can put blaze rods in an enervation dynamo? Also, is there a good way to make renewable blaze rods without setting up a blaze farm?

 

[Ieldra]

How many laser drills with all four prechargers could you fit into a 64x64 square?

Just wondering~?

62x62, naturally. By placing the laser/precharger systems at different heights, you can place a laser beam in every coordinate, except at the edges where the prechargers result in a two-block wide space where no beams can be placed.

 

[Ieldra]

You can put blaze rods in an enervation dynamo? Also, is there a good way to make renewable blaze rods without setting up a blaze farm?

I don't know if you can place a blaze rod in an enervation dynamo. I was replying to the post where the OP said he's short one blaze rod for an ender tank. As for making blaze powder renewable, not that I'm aware of unless you use Ex Nihilo, where it occasionally drops from sifted dust. Run the powder through an IC compressor and you have the rods. Magical Crops can also make blaze rods IIRC, but then Magical Crops can make almost anything renewable.

 

[Keserian]

62x62, naturally. By placing the laser/precharger systems at different heights, you can place a laser beam in every coordinate, except at the edges where the prechargers result in a two-block wide space where no beams can be placed.

This leads me to want to go find out how many laser drills you can power off of a fusion plant. I have a dream about building one of those on SSP at some point.

Also, I think bees can do it, but I don't get into bees unless I'm using Gendustry, and that requires a crap load of power.