Blulectric engine - does anyone use it?

[baw179]

I thought this thing looked cool when I saw it running in DW20s RPpre6 spot light vid, so I built myself a vertical wind turbine on top a tower at Y100 and then ran the HV wire down and into a room with a 9x9 array of BT batteries. Took a while for all the batboxes to fill up, but eventually they did.

I thought I'd give the engine a try today and hooked it up to my fermenter to see how it performed vs. my biogas engine. It was slightly slower but more worryingly it was draining my array of batboxes at some crazy rate. I fished out my voltmeter and checked the output HV wire between the batboxes and the engine and it was drawing 4.1kW, then I checked the input HV wire from the windmill and that was only 0.5kW (calm weather day) but would max out at 4kW if I toggled a storm.

Given that the vertical turbine is (I think) the highest tier energy generator in RP and considering the speed that a single fermenter drained my storage, it begs the question: what is the point of it? I realise of course that the blame really lay with the RP windmills here, but as the energy is consumed at about 10x the level it can be reproduced when hooked up to an "average" machine it seems rather pointless to me.

I get the impression that it's only designed for low draw applications such as the RP sorting machines, but if that's the case then a simple BT solar, BT batbox and some blue alloy wire would do the job without needing to make a whole load of complicated items to make the engine (and let's not even start on the mammoth task of making the wind turbine and kinetic generator!).

Am I missing some cool use for this stuff or is it really more for decoration and 'looking cool' over function? I do like seeing my wind turbine spinning and originally planned to build more but I'm not seeing the benefits. One thing I will say is I think DW20 was being rather optimistic in his video showing a blulectric engine + wind turbine powering a quarry!

 

[zaekeon]

I've seen many people on here say it's a good way to do power early on in buildcraft (if you have a windmill)

 

[drazath]

I don't like the turbines, I power my engine with solar panels (indirectly - the solar panels are hooked to a stack of battery boxes, from which the engine draws power to keep a redstone energy cell charged).

 

[baw179]

I've seen many people on here say it's a good way to do power early on in buildcraft (if you have a windmill)

Early on in BC? I'm struggling to see this. The BT engine requires some crazy crazy stuff to make it, eg. coils and use of diamond drawplate amongst other things. I doubt that many people would have that stuff early on. The windmills themselves aren't something you can build early on either imho.

 

[Symmetryc]

I have a 27 solar panel set up and I can keep the Blulectric engine on 24/7. Its great for passive BC Energy.

 

[baw179]

I have a 27 solar panel set up and I can keep the Blulectric engine on 24/7. Its great for passive BC Energy.

What is it powering?

 

[DoctorOr]

I tried to the use the blulectric engine with _two_ turbine windmills, but at a 40 y-block distance, with 10kv wire it couldn't even power 5 MJ. There was some power, but most of it was getting lost in the wire.

Later, those two windmills at a 60 block y-distance couldn't power 5 routers. Three was the max.

Moral of the story: Blutricity travels poorly.

 

[Enigmius1]

BT engines aren't really intended as early or even mid-game options. You need to have the ability to generate and transmit the blulectricity in place, and running 60-100 blocks worth of HV wire is not really a good solution. Think many battery boxes and many more BT batteries cycling through a system that bypasses the need for miles of wire and then consider the cost of such a system in addition to the cost of the turbines and generators.

 

[Saice]

I use them.... and I've done silly things with them.

http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/how-to-use-the-bt-engine-as-a-pluse-engine.7894/
http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/i-am-wrong-about-bt-engines.8017/
http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/silly-things-to-do-with-getting-bt-into-eu.8272/

That being said they are not the best way to do anything. BT to MJ is about 1k watts per MJ and all forms of production of BT has issues in some form or another. Also the BT Engine itself has issues it does not throttle down like some other engines and can even by pass some settings like it will power a Redstone Cell even when it is set to 0 max input. So you have to build in extra control systems into BT engine based power other wise you will be wasting output.

But they are fun to use and you can make some interesting builds. Just realize it will take up a lot of space.

 

[Bickers]

think direwolf said on one of his videos 1 upright windmill is equal to 10 solars so to me its like wind is a early/mid game while solar is mid/late game power

 

[baw179]

BT engines aren't really intended as early or even mid-game options. You need to have the ability to generate and transmit the blulectricity in place, and running 60-100 blocks worth of HV wire is not really a good solution. Think many battery boxes and many more BT batteries cycling through a system that bypasses the need for miles of wire and then consider the cost of such a system in addition to the cost of the turbines and generators.

Well that's kinda my point! If running BT wire is to be avoided then it makes the windmills pointless as very few people are going to build right next to them, or at least not at the height you need to place to generate decent amounts of energy. I would wager that most people would place them on top of a tower and then run HV wire down to ground level. Even if you keep blue alloy wire to a minimum to reduce the loss and keep it all HV between the transformers there still isn't enough energy being generated to power an average machine.

 

[Revemohl]

I like just setting it together with a windmill/solar panel system up high in the sky, then pointing it at an Energy Tesseract and getting (a bit) of nearly maintenance-free power at my base. It isn't enough to power everything, but at least it's not 100% useless.

 

[warfighter67]

You don't need to worry about height with windmills. Someone tested this fact. Needless to say, I'd just wire up a 16x16 array of solars

 

[Enigmius1]

Well that's kinda my point! If running BT wire is to be avoided then it makes the windmills pointless as very few people are going to build right next to them, or at least not at the height you need to place to generate decent amounts of energy. I would wager that most people would place them on top of a tower and then run HV wire down to ground level. Even if you keep blue alloy wire to a minimum to reduce the loss and keep it all HV between the transformers there still isn't enough energy being generated to power an average machine.

As I said, running wire over that distance is not the ideal solution. I even told you the solution. You don't send the power, you send BT batteries with the power in them. Zero energy loss over any distance. And also as I said, that's why the engines aren't early or mid-game items, because you have to have the resources for all the battery boxes and BT batteries, and you have to have the experience and understanding of mechanics to conceive of the system (or wait for someone else to conceive of it for you.) Stop thinking in terms of wires over ludicrous distances and start thinking in terms of viable alternatives. You could have kinetic generators producing blulectricity at y150 and ship it to bedrock with 0 energy loss if you know how, but it's not going to happen by plunking wire everywhere.

 

[baw179]

As I said, running wire over that distance is not the ideal solution. I even told you the solution. You don't send the power, you send BT batteries with the power in them. Zero energy loss over any distance. And also as I said, that's why the engines aren't early or mid-game items, because you have to have the resources for all the battery boxes and BT batteries, and you have to have the experience and understanding of mechanics to conceive of the system (or wait for someone else to conceive of it for you.) Stop thinking in terms of wires over ludicrous distances and start thinking in terms of viable alternatives. You could have kinetic generators producing blulectricity at y150 and ship it to bedrock with 0 energy loss if you know how, but it's not going to happen by plunking wire everywhere.

Putting batboxes inline doesn't work either. I mentioned this already in a thread a few days ago. The engine is taking power faster than the batboxes can transfer their power between each other so once the nearest batbox has been drained, the engine's power output reduces to nothing until some power gets transferred from the next nearest batbox. You can reduce this effect to some extent by using blue alloy wire and having at least some of the batboxes equidistant from each other but then you have the issue of power loss in the wire to contend with. Even running wire alongside the batboxes to try to even out the power draw doesn't work as it ignores it and still pulls everything from (and through) the nearest batbox.

You could have your kinetic generator at Y150 and machine at Y0 attached via a stack of batboxes with no power loss if you so desired, but if the machine takes a reasonable amount of power it will stop once it's drained the nearest batbox until some more energy transfers from the next one inline.

Also for the record I never said that the engines were early game. In fact I said the exact opposite.

 

[cmwatford]

Putting batboxes inline doesn't work either. I mentioned this already in a thread a few days ago. The engine is taking power faster than the batboxes can transfer their power between each other so once the nearest batbox has been drained, the engine's power output reduces to nothing until some power gets transferred from the next nearest batbox. You can reduce this effect to some extent by using blue alloy wire and having at least some of the batboxes equidistant from each other but then you have the issue of power loss in the wire to contend with. Even running wire alongside the batboxes to try to even out the power draw doesn't work as it ignores it and still pulls everything from (and through) the nearest batbox.

You could have your kinetic generator at Y150 and machine at Y0 attached via a stack of batboxes with no power loss if you so desired, but if the machine takes a reasonable amount of power it will stop once it's drained the nearest batbox until some more energy transfers from the next one inline.

Also for the record I never said that the engines were early game. In fact I said the exact opposite.

I think you missed his point. He's saying avoid having the machines transmit power to each other and just send the power through something like batteries in an enderchest. Have your power gen setup constantly charging batteries that are used to keep the batbox hooked up to your engine constantly charged.

 

[Dafuq?]

Putting batboxes inline doesn't work either. I mentioned this already in a thread a few days ago. The engine is taking power faster than the batboxes can transfer their power between each other so once the nearest batbox has been drained, the engine's power output reduces to nothing until some power gets transferred from the next nearest batbox.

That's strange, I have 4 kinetics and about 25-30 solars on the roof of my powerplant, feeding into an array of battery boxes with almost no blue alloy wires in between. This powers my blulectric engine around the clock, without it ever stopping. When the battery boxes are empty, it charges the redstone energy cell slower, but I think I've never seen it stopping entirely. And if I switch off the engine, let the battery boxes charge until they're all full and then switch it on again, they get sucked dry slowly but surely, beginning with the one next to the engine, ending with the last ones below my kinetic generators.

 

[Enigmius1]

Putting batboxes inline doesn't work either. I mentioned this already in a thread a few days ago. The engine is taking power faster than the batboxes can transfer their power between each other so once the nearest batbox has been drained, the engine's power output reduces to nothing until some power gets transferred from the next nearest batbox. You can reduce this effect to some extent by using blue alloy wire and having at least some of the batboxes equidistant from each other but then you have the issue of power loss in the wire to contend with. Even running wire alongside the batboxes to try to even out the power draw doesn't work as it ignores it and still pulls everything from (and through) the nearest batbox.

What matters isn't how fast one battery box can feed into another so much as how fast a BT battery can discharge into a batbox. From there you can come up with a compact but simple setup with batboxes equidistant from the engine and you might be surprised just how much blulectric power you can cram through a system.

 

[Poppycocks]

I use them for fire'n'forget power generation. I've got one with 9x9 -5 solars siting atop my 9x9x8 seed oil tank, it's powering three squeezers.

 

[Omicron]

Given that the vertical turbine is (I think) the highest tier energy generator in RP and considering the speed that a single fermenter drained my storage, it begs the question: what is the point of it? I realise of course that the blame really lay with the RP windmills here, but as the energy is consumed at about 10x the level it can be reproduced when hooked up to an "average" machine it seems rather pointless to me.

There is no blame lying with the wind turbines. If anything, they generate a ridiculous amount of power that nothing short of several blulectric furnaces running 24/7, or the blulectric engine, can even use. They have a theoretical max output of 100 times that of an optimally set up thermopile, and I am using a single thermopile (plus two battery boxes of buffer storage) to feed 11 sorters, 2 retrievers, a charging bench, a blulectric furnace for my few non-automated smelting jobs and a blulectric alloy furnace for wafers. The wind turbine is so extremely powerful that it would spent 95%+ of its its time running idle over my base.

What you haven't realized is the fact that the blulectric engine is a crossover device between two completely different power systems. Blutricity and Buildcraft power are nothing alike; compared to that difference, Buildcraft and Industrialcraft power systems could almost be called similar. In addition to the mechanical differences, Redpower also follows an entirely different design paradigm. All its devices make do with very small amounts of power compared to other mods. For example, while basic furnaces in TE or Industrialcraft run with 2 MJ/t or 3 EU/t, which is considered to be among the smallest power profiles you'll find in those mods, blulectric furnaces run at 1 kW... which is equivalent to 1 MJ/t. And that is the single highest energy draw of any machine in Redpower.

The only exception is the blulectric engine, which translates from a low power system (Blutricity) to a comparatively higher power system (Buildcraft energy). Therefore you need to pour ridiculous amounts of power into the engine to achieve any kind of noticeable output. If there was the possibility to do the other direction, creating blulectric power with MJ, you would find that a single peat-fired engine would be more than enough to drive all the Redpower devices you ever built.