EU production - Recommendations?

[Brian Cherrick]

At first I was going to go the steam boiler route (I even had 2 boilers 2x36HP) made. Then it was time to start making the turbine unit, when I realized I didn't have near enough iron to convert to steel to make it, and the rotor. So out went my way of making the EU via steam. Not to mention I don't have enough steel for the industrial engines.

I do have a quarry running that I run when I am online (so it doesn't back up my system). But I don't get nearly enough materials to cover cost to build, let alone what it would to maintain. I did build 1 MFSU in anticipation of getting it running, but that is a no go, at least for the moment.

I could go the reactor route, but not sure I got enough copper at the moment to go with the design I usually use that outputs 420 EU/t.

I am looking for other suggestions of how to produce a decent amount of EU as I would like to start using a mass fab soon. I have quite a buildup of materials that I could toss in their.

Thanks again for the help.

Regards,

Brian

 

[FrankieTheSnake]

You can go MFR style and make a treefarm with that, creates alot of power but you need to supply it with forestry (or other) fertilizer, because you have a quarry it's easy, MFR autofarm for the win!

 

[SatanicSanta]

Depending on the modpack you can get a T5 Blaze Spawner and feed the blaze rods into generators. Yes, it will lag you to crap, but it is super efficient. Another route is solar, 9 basic solar panels is enough to power your basic IC2 machines for quite some time. Of course, if you plan on using this you should wait to get automation going until you have Advanced Solar Panels, and depending on the modpack can be quite far into the game. Another route is lava, which everyone has done, is super easy. Just chunkload a part of the nether, pump some lava out into an ender tank going into some Geothermals. If you are using a pack with GregTech and decide to go the geothermal route I recommend converting them into Thermal Generators, because they double the output of EU per bucket. Windmills are inefficient, and can explode. If you are using a pack with RedPower you can have infinite, cheaty, water power. I don't remember the exact set up, but I am quite certain it required some deployers with buckets, some retrievers, and pipes running into Water Mills. There are tons of videos (last time I checked) on how to have infinite water power.

 

[Resender]

You could always transmute gold or enderpearls into iron if you have EE3

 

[PoisonWolf]

Lava bees in alvearies with a bunch of thermal generators going. =)

 

[Siro]

If you have power converters installed, you could use that to convert your existing steam setup directly into eu.

 

[Lord Wumbo]

A water tower is good 24/7 energy, although making all the water mills would be time consuming with GregTech.

You could also use Steve's Carts to make a tree farm. Pump the logs into an auto-crafting table from BC for planks and pump the planks to generators. Once you have some initial power, hook up some electric furnaces and auto-smelt the logs into charcoal.

Also, bees can get pretty OP, lava bees with a cobble gen and macerator for sand, turn the phosphor into lava, infinite lava to be pumped into thermal generators.

Or Uranium bees pumping uranium for a nuclear reactor.

And if you're really rich, FUSION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Benjywa]

Boilers - imo you don't need these until you have a matter fabricator - it takes 6 hours to get up to temp and many days to be cost effective see post
http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/thr...am-boiler-efficiency.13506/page-8#post-328785

Are you at a point you can run the boilers 24hrs a day? if so chuck an energy bridge and your 720 steam in x 2 will run everything easily!
If not then the fuel in engines to create lava via a crucible and cobble gene very easily = on demand power

I don't like rotors as they wear out and I cant be online 24 hrs a day to replace them as they break = massive loss of EU

 

[eric167]

A water tower is good 24/7 energy, although making all the water mills would be time consuming with GregTech.

You could also use Steve's Carts to make a tree farm. Pump the logs into an auto-crafting table from BC for planks and pump the planks to generators. Once you have some initial power, hook up some electric furnaces and auto-smelt the logs into charcoal.

Also, bees can get pretty OP, lava bees with a cobble gen and macerator for sand, turn the phosphor into lava, infinite lava to be pumped into thermal generators.

Or Uranium bees pumping uranium for a nuclear reactor.

And if you're really rich, FUSION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

fusion is a true end-game thing, and not really practical till you get a matter fabricator up.
i went the solar panel route- the adv. solars dont require excessive amounts of high-tier matierials. of course, this was w/o gregtech on hardmode.
w/ hardmode, i would go for a nether lava pump fueling thermal generators.
then once you have the materials for it, fission reactor, or ultimate solars, which output 512/t forever which outperforms your setup by a fair bit.
now you can set up the massive field of accumalators, electrolizers, centrifuges, transposers, pipes, and power cables needed for a fusion plant.
though once THATS setup, a plasma generator will output 2048/t on demand (only outputs when machine requests), for practically forever. a quantum tank prior to the generator will allow for a truly stupendous energy storage unit. each cell/bucket is 8192000 eu, a tank can store 2000000 cells, for a total storage capacity of 16.384 TRILLION eu. overkill much?

 

[Benjywa]

good point - need more info

are you playing manmode (GT) or boymode?
do you have energy bridges/ a preference for using or not using them?
do you have a preference of sources of power or anything you don't want eg lava
do you want on demand or potential for never ending 24hr a day power
what level of eu are you looking for?
do you want simple - 1-2 step process or something bigger/more efficient eg saplings+ wheat to compost to fermenter to still to boiler to engines to magma to generators?
do you have enough storage to get a big system up and running (will 10K saplings ruin your day?) or need a supply you can switch or and off?
how far off matter fab are you?

That will help

 

[Brian Cherrick]

For those wondering, I am using the DW20 modpack with gregtech, advanced machines, and power coverters installed.

You can go MFR style and make a treefarm with that, creates alot of power but you need to supply it with forestry (or other) fertilizer, because you have a quarry it's easy, MFR autofarm for the win!

A treefarm, what do ya mean? I think you are thinking about something different than the rubbertree farm I got going.

Depending on the modpack you can get a T5 Blaze Spawner and feed the blaze rods into generators. Yes, it will lag you to crap, but it is super efficient. Another route is solar, 9 basic solar panels is enough to power your basic IC2 machines for quite some time. Of course, if you plan on using this you should wait to get automation going until you have Advanced Solar Panels, and depending on the modpack can be quite far into the game. Another route is lava, which everyone has done, is super easy. Just chunkload a part of the nether, pump some lava out into an ender tank going into some Geothermals. If you are using a pack with GregTech and decide to go the geothermal route I recommend converting them into Thermal Generators, because they double the output of EU per bucket. Windmills are inefficient, and can explode. If you are using a pack with RedPower you can have infinite, cheaty, water power. I don't remember the exact set up, but I am quite certain it required some deployers with buckets, some retrievers, and pipes running into Water Mills. There are tons of videos (last time I checked) on how to have infinite water power.

I got the soul shards mod, so a shard spawner is an option in the future. I think I got a good enough computer to hand most spawner setups, less you are talking about server lag? I do have gregtech, so I will look into the Lava.

A water tower is good 24/7 energy, although making all the water mills would be time consuming with GregTech.

You could also use Steve's Carts to make a tree farm. Pump the logs into an auto-crafting table from BC for planks and pump the planks to generators. Once you have some initial power, hook up some electric furnaces and auto-smelt the logs into charcoal.

Also, bees can get pretty OP, lava bees with a cobble gen and macerator for sand, turn the phosphor into lava, infinite lava to be pumped into thermal generators.

Or Uranium bees pumping uranium for a nuclear reactor.

And if you're really rich, FUSION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Someone else mentioned a treefarm, but how do I set up one with steve's carts. How do the bees work? I've heard of them, but don't know how to really work with bees. Any tutorials or guides about on any of this?

Boilers - imo you don't need these until you have a matter fabricator - it takes 6 hours to get up to temp and many days to be cost effective see post
http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/thr...am-boiler-efficiency.13506/page-8#post-328785

Are you at a point you can run the boilers 24hrs a day? if so chuck an energy bridge and your 720 steam in x 2 will run everything easily!
If not then the fuel in engines to create lava via a crucible and cobble gene very easily = on demand power

I don't like rotors as they wear out and I cant be online 24 hrs a day to replace them as they break = massive loss of EU

Does a mass/matter fabricator mind? I have access to both on my server (I enabled both recipes), or does it have to be a matter fabricator? I don't have either right now. Given the amount of iron>steel needed to keep it running 24/7 (rotors every 40 hrs or so) I'd say not at the moment, which is why I stopped busting my balls so hard once I knew I wasn't going to be able to do it.

good point - need more info

are you playing manmode (GT) or boymode?
do you have energy bridges/ a preference for using or not using them?
do you have a preference of sources of power or anything you don't want eg lava
do you want on demand or potential for never ending 24hr a day power
what level of eu are you looking for?
do you want simple - 1-2 step process or something bigger/more efficient eg saplings+ wheat to compost to fermenter to still to boiler to engines to magma to generators?
do you have enough storage to get a big system up and running (will 10K saplings ruin your day?) or need a supply you can switch or and off?
how far off matter fab are you?

That will help

1. I would say it is a mix of both. Some of the GT recipes we felt were ridiculous we toned down, (only 1 or 2), so I'd say more man than boy.
2. I have power converters, so energy bridges are an option, and I don't mind using them.
3. I just want power, I'd rather stay away from the lava (in the long term) if possible, but if I need to use it until I get another system running I am fine with that.
4. I'd rather the potential for never ending that would essentially be on demand wouldn't it?
5. Eventually I would like enough to run mass/matter fabs & the other machines.
6. I can go simple, or complex depending on recommendations
7. At the moment I don't have the storage for 10k+ saplings, but I can just make another 16k storage disk (I have ME), to handle it. What do you recommend here?
8. Given the amount of Iridium needed, I am quite a ways off yet. I haven't even found my first piece of ore yet, and ya need 4 iridium per plate.


Thanks all for the help in getting something running.

 

[SuperSplit]

Depending on the modpack you can get a T5 Blaze Spawner and feed the blaze rods into generators. Yes, it will lag you to crap, but it is super efficient. Another route is solar, 9 basic solar panels is enough to power your basic IC2 machines for quite some time. Of course, if you plan on using this you should wait to get automation going until you have Advanced Solar Panels, and depending on the modpack can be quite far into the game. Another route is lava, which everyone has done, is super easy. Just chunkload a part of the nether, pump some lava out into an ender tank going into some Geothermals. If you are using a pack with GregTech and decide to go the geothermal route I recommend converting them into Thermal Generators, because they double the output of EU per bucket. Windmills are inefficient, and can explode. If you are using a pack with RedPower you can have infinite, cheaty, water power. I don't remember the exact set up, but I am quite certain it required some deployers with buckets, some retrievers, and pipes running into Water Mills. There are tons of videos (last time I checked) on how to have infinite water power.

Have you watched kingqueenhappy's feed the beast tutorial lets play? I love that series and the blaze rod farm works very well...

 

[SatanicSanta]

Have you watched kingqueenhappy's feed the beast tutorial lets play? I love that series and the blaze rod farm works very well...

I have not.

 

[Siro]

2. I have power converters, so energy bridges are an option, and I don't mind using them.
3. I just want power, I'd rather stay away from the lava (in the long term) if possible, but if I need to use it until I get another system running I am fine with that.
4. I'd rather the potential for never ending that would essentially be on demand wouldn't it?
5. Eventually I would like enough to run mass/matter fabs & the other machines.
6. I can go simple, or complex depending on recommendations
7. At the moment I don't have the storage for 10k+ saplings, but I can just make another 16k storage disk (I have ME), to handle it. What do you recommend here?
8. Given the amount of Iridium needed, I am quite a ways off yet. I haven't even found my first piece of ore yet, and ya need 4 iridium per plate.


Thanks all for the help in getting something running.

If you've already built two boilers as noted in your post, the fastest option is build energy bridges. You'll need a steam consumer, energy bridge, and producer of your choice for every two boilers.

 

[Brian Cherrick]

If you've already built two boilers as noted in your post, the fastest option is build energy bridges. You'll need a steam consumer, energy bridge, and producer of your choice for every two boilers.

So in the mean time 2 boilers could supply 1 bridge combination? What about the other stuff?

 

[Siro]

So in the mean time 2 boilers could supply 1 bridge combination? What about the other stuff?

Well for me anyway, boilers plus energy bridge setups are usually what take me well through to matter fabs (as well as providing startup power for fusion). Consider that with an HV producer, you'll be putting out 512eu/t and charging your mfsu easily. Getting more power is just a matter of more boilers and a constant fuel supply (which you've hopefully sorted out prior to building boilers). If you haven't sorted out a constant fuel supply, do that next. Renewable solid fuel is fairly easy using an mfr tree farm (jungle trees + planter+harvester to start, add fertilizer+composter+sewer when you can), which can also incidentally take care of renewable liquid fuel via biofuel (excess saplings). There are lots of other options tho in the form of steve carts, mob farms, etc.

 

[Methusalem]

The combination of Steam Boilers, Tesseracts and Power Converters allows for really simple and modular setups.
For instance, 4x36HP boilers create 2880 steam per tick that you can drain with Liquiducts and Tesseracts. You need 3x Steam Consumers, connected to 2x Tesseracts, to feed it into an Energy Bridge. Connect the other 3 faces of the Energy Bridge to 3x HV Producers for a 1400 EU/t output.

And I wouldn't completely ignore lava. Check out the "Ender-Thermal Pump" from the Extra Utils mod. Has a built-in chunk loader and creates zero lag. (It replaces the lava blocks with stone and prevents any block updates). Feed the lava into GregTech's Thermal Generators, which have a high output and very decent efficiency. Later you could switch to Demonic Bees, which produce phosphor that can be squeezed into lava.
Speaking of bees, Refined Bees are fairly easy to breed and produce Oil and Ethanol at a rate of around 30-35 buckets per hour, this means one single bee is able to supply 8x 36HP boilers with fuel. (One single bee and some infrastructure around it can generate 2800 EU/t ... if my math is not completely off. )

If you don't mind to convert from MJ to EU, then MFR Biofuel Generators are also worth a look. They get their fuel from Biogenerators. These Biogenerators are ultra efficient when supplied with a variety of seeds and saplings, each generator can support 10 Biofuel reactors for 160 MJ/t or 390 EU/t. ... Or simply feed the Biofuel again into Steam Boilers. Each generator can supply 2x 36HP boilers for 700 EU/t.

And if you have lot (really LOTS) of steel, then you could use Railcraft's Steam Turbine for the best possible efficiency. Each 36HP boiler creates 350 EU with Power Converters, but you get 425 EU when running the steam through Steam Turbines.

 

[SatanicSanta]

Power Converters are boring.

 

[Siro]

So in the mean time 2 boilers could supply 1 bridge combination? What about the other stuff?

Well for me anyway, boilers plus energy bridge setups are usually what take me well through to matter fabs (as well as providing startup power for fusion). Consider that with an HV producer, you'll be putting out 512eu/t and charging your mfsu easily. Getting more power is just a matter of more boilers and a constant fuel supply (which you've hopefully sorted out prior to building boilers). If you haven't sorted out a constant fuel supply, do that next. Renewable solid fuel is fairly easy using an mfr tree farm (jungle trees + planter+harvester to start, add fertilizer+composter+sewer when you can), which can also incidentally take care of renewable liquid fuel via biofuel (excess saplings). There are lots of other options tho in the form of steve carts, mob farms, etc.

 

[Brian Cherrick]

If going the bridge route, will the boiler(s) blow up if the MFSU is full, thus giving the steam no where to go?