Efficient EU Production?

[AnnaMayBelle]

My fiance and I started a world to play together, just the two of us. So far, we've done pretty well for ourselves... We have full enchantment and brewing capabilities, a charming little farm, a blast furnace, two coke ovens, and a decent starter IC2 spread (generator, batbox, macerator, extractor, compressor, and electric furnace). Our last order of business was building a Diamond Drill and Batpack.

One thing we've noticed, however, is we just can't seem to keep coal on hand. It didn't take long to realize we'd been burning through it at an insane rate to keep our IC2 machines powered. Typically, we'd jump right onto solar power to feed our machines, but with GregTech, I understand that's a much more expensive proposition than it once was.

Now, this is NOT me complaining about GregTech. If anything, my fiance and I had become bored with how quickly we advanced through the technological chain in The Modpack That Shall Not Be Named, and the increased difficulty is a welcomed challenge. However, I'm curious, what do you feel is the best cheap, efficient source of EUs now?

 

[Lavious]

Look into thermal expansion Magma Crucible. Use netherrack to get lava for only 4k MJ of power, then use that lava to power Magmatic engines to keep the cycle going. There will be plenty of lava left over for thermal generators (20 EU a tick). So far this has been how my base gets all its power...tons and tons of netherrack.

 

[potter]

Getting to advanced solar (tier 2) is still pretty easy to make and the industrial centrifuge is a pretty nifty thing to have running while you do other stuff. Useful if you've set up shop in an eternal day mystcraft age.
Other than that, Thermal Expansion lava method is pretty viable if you supply it with netherrack.
If you have acquired the crystal symbol in mystcraft, you could use the Railcraft/Mystcraft Portal/Geothermal method of supplying lava to your base from the nether.

 

[arkangyl]

If you want a simpler solution, Geothermal is a good way to start out with EU production. I haven't bothered with the Magma Crucible sorcery yet, as I'm way more comfortable in IC2 than in BC or TE. I'll normally get a BC Pump built, Tanks, a Stirling Engine or two, and some Waterproof Cobble Pipes, and go find some underground lava pools. One decent sized pool can easily give you a stack and a half of Lava Cells, which provide 20,000 EU each in a Geo Gen.

This can easily get you set up long enough to get the Industrial Centrifuge going, and whip up some of the Advanced Solars. Those are usually my go-to for mid-end game EU generation.

 

[enoch]

We found the same issue with lack of coal in our server, so we jumped into powering with Forestry. It's a bit more complex, but it's definitely unique and can give you a challenge.

• Saplings + Fertilizer (from Apatite Ore) --> Fermenter = Biomass.
  • Biomass itself can be used to power a Bio Generator at 8 EU/t. If you take it a step further:
• Biomass --> Still = Biofuel
  • Biofuel produces 16 EU/t in a Bio Generator, which delivers plenty of power to our MFE.
• Both the fermenter and the still can be powered by Biogas Engines filled with Biomass, like a loop circuit. The Fermenter actually produces more biomass than the biogas engines consume. (In my testing, one fermenter can power at least four to five Biogas engines and still have a positive Biomass outflow).

We have a tree farm with Steve's Carts and a tree cart cutter, so that's where we got our extra saplings. If you don't have saplings, cactus can also be used, among other things, though saplings produce the more biomass per sapling (http://forestry.sengir.net/wiki/index.php?n=Machines.Fermenter).

 

[tedyhere]

Care to share your tree farm design?

 

[enoch]

I would post a screenshot, but I'm unable to connect to FTB atm. It's a zig zap-type loop in a 14x14 shape (not sure exact dimensions) with the Cargo Manager at one end. The tree cutter cart is powered with a coal engine running on tree wood itself, so it never runs out of fuel since it refills itself before filling its inventory (it also refuels it's saplings). It then dumps all the chest contents into the cargo manager, which are pumped out and sorted.

Below is a rough text 'picture' of what the rail line looks like, with the horiztonal and vertical lines being rail, 'C' being the cargo manager, and the asterisks are empty space (the forum code won't let me use spaces to separate). Each rail row is separated by two blocks, allowing the cart to plant saplings on both sides of the rail. I'm not exactly sure how many rows I have, but you get the general idea.
__________________
|__________ *****|
___________|*****|
|__________ ***** |
___________|*****|
|_____________C__ |

I'll post an actual picture when FTB is back up.

 

[Tylor]

Bio Generator is extremelly ineffective. But, if you have some kind of tree farm, you can make scaffolds from wood and burn them instead of coal.

 

[enoch]

Bio Generator is extremelly ineffective. But, if you have some kind of tree farm, you can make scaffolds from wood and burn them instead of coal.

Hmm, interesting as I've never built those before. Reading up on it, a tiny bit of wood produces a lot of scaffolds which can be burned for quite a bit of EU (http://wiki.industrial-craft.net/index.php?title=Generator). It certainly would be easier and less complex that way.

 

[Maximuscr31]

Just put your coal into coke ovens. When it comes out it will last forever in an engine. Ive used it, peat fire engines, solars, magmatic, biofuel and sterling. Peat takes too much time to make automated without RP. Solars are good but expensive. Magmatic using a magma crucible is awesome but you need a steady flow of netherrack. Biofuel is one of the favorites right now. sterling is my least favorite now though.

 

[Magicferret]

For a more short term solution while you work on biofuel or lava you could grab a chainsaw and go chop down some extrabiomes redwood trees. Plenty of logs to make charcoal or burn straight up and masses of saplings which you can grow more giant trees with and burn for EU as well. Enoch's suggestion of a Steve's carts tree farm is a good one too, other than a fair amount of iron they're not very expensive, self sustaining and they provide plenty of combustible material.

 

[Pinkishu]

Water mills ftw Though you'd need a turtle to fill them atm

Peat is automatable well too i think

 

[Tylor]

Shooting IC2 laser vertically is a fast way to "cut" huge trees. Tecnd to start fires, though.

 

[Pinkishu]

Turtles are a fast way to clear trees *cough* You may need some programming though

 

[Omicron]

Steam boilers powering steam turbines are pretty efficient, largely because steam boilers themselves are rather overpowered. To witness, a fairly basic 8 LP boiler produces roughly 17,777 MJ from a single unit of charcoal (twice that for normal coal, four times for coal coke). It outputs 16 MJ/t worth of energy, which will run a steam turbine at half output for 25 EU/t. So one single unit of charcoal in a generator gives 4,000 EU, but it gives over 27,775 EU when used in the steam boiler. Twice that for coal, four times that for coal coke. You can also power a boiler with creosote oil, if you have a lot of that lying around.

The downside is that you need a lot of steel for the turbine, and the fact that the boiler needs to keep running. If it is not at 100% heat, its fuel efficiency falls rapidly. So you need a dedicated infrastructure to produce fuel for the boiler.

 

[Pinkishu]

Steam Turbines aren't worth it imo
You need 99 Steel for 1 Rotor and it breaks after about 41 Hours at 100%. Maybe once the industrial blast furnace is out and you have lots of steel lying around, but then I'd argue you can use the iron to make IC generators instead

 

[Omicron]

Yes, but then what do you feed these generators?

The problem discussed in this thread is the lack of fuel, not the lack of iron. And steam turbines are very, very fuel efficient.

 

[Pinkishu]

what to feed em? wind, sun and water

 

[AnnaMayBelle]

We ran into a very odd situation today... We built a Geothermal Generator, but quickly found that it was chewing through Lava at an insane rate, and quite frankly, our base isn't close enough to a supply of lava to make it worthwhile. Nether trips, meanwhile, are still quite dangerous. We looked into a Magma Crucible, but we have made -zero- progress on a BC tech tree, so that seems like quite an undertaking. So, we considered working with biomasses, but realized it seems to be a lot of effort for little return at this point.

Strangely enough, we realized that while we aren't technologically advanced, we DO have a considerable wealth of resources at our disposal. So, we're starting on a nuclear reactor tomorrow. My fiance is the nuclear-expert of the two of us, I tend to leave the reactor building mostly in his hands, but I believe we're estimating a 20 EU/t output with almost no maintenance required. In the meantime, we're going to just power Power Crystals for our factory, as we're not ready to run a long-distance power network yet and I don't like having buzzing radioactive death too close to my house.

 

[Yusunoha]

you do not need to go to the nether to get lava, if you dig down in the overworld to around y12 or lower, you have the chance of finding a big lava lake, I usually find one pretty fast, or some smaller ones near eachother.
get yourself a BC pump, about 2-3 BC tanks, 4 redstone engines and 2 levers. try to put the pump in the middle of a lake, if not possible try making a platform with some cobble. then put the 4 engines around it, and activate them with the levers. then on 1 side of the pump put down the tanks and they will store the lava. if you are using gregtech I suggest using the forestry cans, since they give more cans then IC cells (because gregtech nerfed them) while you are holding the cans just rightclick on the tanks with lava and the cans get filled.

this is a very basic lava system. you could go through great lenghts and use liquid pipes to pipe the lava up to your base, but that's quite a waste. if you like to go more advanced you could try using railcraft and portalgun to move the lava from the lower layers back to your base, or use railcraft and mystcraft, though for mystcraft you'll first need to craft an expensive items that requires 9 diamond blocks and 1 gold block. both of these 2 methods can be seen in DW20's LP if you are curious on how to build them.