Gold Energy Pipes vs. Redstone Conduits?

[Freightrain]

I've read that Redstone Conduits from TE are more efficient at transporting energy, but I'm trying to figure out how much. I'm under the impression that the conduits still lose some energy, but not over distance. I haven't found any numbers or concrete concepts as of yet. I'm also not sure which is more expensive to produce.

Anyone know how Conduits dissipate energy, if they in fact do?

 

[Kyre]

In terms of price, conduits are roughly comparable to golden conductive pipes:

8 gold conductive pipes is:
- 2 gold
- 1 glass
- 8 redstone

8 Redstone Conduits is:
- 1 gold
- 1 silver
- 1 lead
- 1 obsidian
- 8 redstone
- Some buildcraft power to assemble the conduits (8,320 MJ)

I don't know how conduits dissipate but I'm sure its comparable to (if not better than) gold conductive pipes. The main source of efficiency is that conduits only draw power to machines that need to use them, and only what they need. With conduits you won't need to worry about a quarry sucking up all your power, or a machine with no work scheduled consuming power. The other main advantage to conduits is that you can have loops in your power network and it won't mess it up, leading to much more compact builds.

 

[zemerick]

I don't know the exact numbers, but I can tell you a few things.

First, I would personally say that conduit is cheaper. This is because the only resource it uses that I do not have a very large excess of is Gold. Conduit uses less gold than Gold Conductive Pipes. ( stone conductive are a lot more lossy than gold, so I'm ignoring them. )

However, Conduit definitely requires a lot more preparation.

Now for losses. This is based off of my reading, and so far experience seems to back it up, but I might be wrong in some details.

Pipes straight into an object have significant losses as any energy sent during a tick that the machine can not use it, is completely lost. EX: Quarry can only accept energy when moving or when trying to break a block. Between these, the energy is lost. Over Power can also be lost. However, because conduit has self storage and can wait for the object to use the power, it does not suffer these issues, making it significantly more efficient.

For distance, even with a short 1 wooden and 10 gold pipes, the conduit surpasses pipes. I went from a pair of electrical engines which I pulsed 1 time using a pressure plate between the 2. These engines fed straight into the pipes, and ended at an empty redstone storage cell. The conduit received 37 MJ, while the pipe received 36 MJ.

Next, to test actual losses for both, I replaced the electrical engines with 2 completely full redstone energy cells, which contain exactly 500,000 MJ each. I left it at the default of sending 50 MJ/T, so these numbers would actually be substantially worse at 5 MJ/T ( or still yet if it was only 1, though the cells can't do that. )

In the end, the Conduit cell had 499,999. This likely just means there was a minor error somewhere as the cell was filled up. It took 10,000 ticks to send the power, and only 1/50th of one single tick lost any power.

EDIT: WOOPS! The following pipe test was stone conductive. I was doing another test and forgot to change it back. Re-doing with gold.

Pipe on the other hand fared MUCH worse. It received just 456,621 energy. Remember, this is only 11 pipes long. Again it took 10,000 ticks to send the power...but this time we saw a loss of 43,379 MJ! That's more than 4 MJ lost every single tick. That's very nearly a 10% loss. ( 8.6758% in fact ) OUCH!

Note that this system completely ignores the losses caused by the machine itself. This is just raw pipe versus conduit.

 

[Meldiron]

While the TE wiki claim that there is some kind of dissipation haven't i seen much of it yet at all.
Did some test earlier where i trasfered from a full redstone cell to a empty redstone cell trough a decently long wire and only lost a single MJ out of the 500 000.
But something i have noticed is that the conduits themselves store a certain amount of energy (1000MJ each i think), and that could give a false impression of dissipation.

 

[zemerick]

While the TE wiki claim that there is some kind of dissipation haven't i seen much of it yet at all.
Did some test earlier where i trasfered from a full redstone cell to a empty redstone cell trough a decently long wire and only lost a single MJ out of the 500 000.
But something i have noticed is that the conduits themselves store a certain amount of energy (1000MJ each i think), and that could give a false impression of dissipation.

I also noticed something interesting regarding the conduits storing energy. When my output cell and finished sending out the MJs, the receiving end started slowing down more and more. In fact, to go from 499,998 to 499,999 it took a second or more ( wasn't really paying close attention so didn't get it timed. )

Anyways, back to my tests. I redid the pipe test with gold pipes. For gold I got: 495,404 MJs. That's a loss of 4,596, or a bit shy of 1%. I find this a bit interesting as gold conduit is supposed to be a loss of 0.01% per pipe, so it should have been 0.1% from the gold pipes. Not sure how wooden pipes are supposed to be, but it would have to be in the .8% range.

I also tried 101 conduit, which would be pretty devastating for pipes, and it still received 499,999 MJs.

I think it's quite clear which is superior

 

[Omicron]

Here's a tip: use the forum search. We just went over this three days ago.

 

[Freightrain]

All right, that's more help than I'd have ever anticipated! As for it's dissipation, I'm wondering if it's over time sitting in those conduits, though so far as I can tell, no. There's some interesting properties that play into conduits when there is no valid destination for energy, as they'll store 1000 MJ so far as I can tell, collectively. But that is still retrievable, if no energy is put into the system (all 1000 of it).

Thanks for all the great input! I'll be sure to make good use of it! Hehe.

Edit: that's true, Omicrom, but I still couldn't find anything on potential for dissipation, when the TE wiki stated it has some. That was my main goal, with the cost being secondary. Now that I know it's approximately zero I can go forward with that.

 

[zemerick]

It would seem 1k overall is correct. Supposedly it was 1,000 per conduit, but I tried placing 5 conduit connected to an electrical engine. I left it running long enough to get over 5,000 MJ ( confirmed with a second engine outputting into an empty cell. ). Then I broke the engine first. Next, I placed an empty redstone cell...and it only received 1,000 not 5,000.

 

[Meldiron]

It would seem 1k overall is correct. Supposedly it was 1,000 per conduit, but I tried placing 5 conduit connected to an electrical engine. I left it running long enough to get over 5,000 MJ ( confirmed with a second engine outputting into an empty cell. ). Then I broke the engine first. Next, I placed an empty redstone cell...and it only received 1,000 not 5,000.

Actually, it's a compromise
It seems it's 1000EU stored pr input/output conduit (and sometimes it seemd to bug to draw more).
So if you connect a total of 5 things to different conduits it should store 5000.
Also, if you connect two things to the same conduit it still only counts as 1.

 

[zemerick]

Actually, it's a compromise
It seems it's 1000EU stored pr input/output conduit (and sometimes it seemd to bug to draw more).
So if you connect a total of 5 things to different conduits it should store 5000.
Also, if you connect two things to the same conduit it still only counts as 1.

Ah, definitely an interesting system. I still haven't found what the losses are for this system though, lol. As far as I can tell it's just energy lost after the storage has capped out.

 

[Meldiron]

Ah, definitely an interesting system. I still haven't found what the losses are for this system though, lol. As far as I can tell it's just energy lost after the storage has capped out.

Just did an quite interesting test, put out a ton of pipes and idle engines (as they wouldn't draw power) and filled up the conduits with power, by setting the input to max 100 i got a clean nice count that increased by 100 each time until about 85%-90% of the power was drained then it started counting slower and the last 100MJ took more then 10 seconds to fill in. It seems the conduits are somehow reducing the the troughput when they start running out of power.

 

[Zelfana]

Just did an quite interesting test, put out a ton of pipes and idle engines (as they wouldn't draw power) and filled up the conduits with power, by setting the input to max 100 i got a clean nice count that increased by 100 each time until about 85%-90% of the power was drained then it started counting slower and the last 100MJ took more then 10 seconds to fill in. It seems the conduits are somehow reducing the the troughput when they start running out of power.

So that's how they lose power, they start to cough when they are almost empty. So if you kept the system powered you would get absolutely no losses. Kind of like keeping an induction furnace heated or rotary macerator running but you would actually not lose any MJs as they would simply be stored.

 

[PieExplosion]

Can't place facades on redstone conduits.

 

[zemerick]

So that's how they lose power, they start to cough when they are almost empty. So if you kept the system powered you would get absolutely no losses. Kind of like keeping an induction furnace heated or rotary macerator running but you would actually not lose any MJs as they would simply be stored.

Actually there's no loss. It still sends all of the power, the transfer just slows down a bit.

 

[Zelfana]

I've seen that one single MJ being lost in action but I didn't wait and stare at the numbers so might be that it is being all alone in the conduits..

 

[zemerick]

I've seen that one single MJ being lost in action but I didn't wait and stare at the numbers so might be that it is being all alone in the conduits..

Yea, it should be noted that I haven't a clue what is up with that 1 MJ. My bet is on a bug somewhere, an off by 1 or something. <shrug> I just ignore that 1, as that really isn't a loss or anything.

 

[Saberwolfcdw]

Does anyone know if Redstone energy Conduit have a Max MJ per tick they can transfer? I am setting up a system on a server with about 200 biogas engines so about 1000MJ /Tick. Just wanting to see if there is any Max so I am not losing anything.

 

[Saice]

I'll be honest with you. Power lose and Cost are nothing compared to the conduits one key feture. It can not explode.

That really is the selling point to me. Storage cells and slapping an extra engine down resolves most of the other issues that come from conduits and to be that is a small price for never having to deal with exploding pipes ever again.

 

[Exasperation]

Does anyone know if Redstone energy Conduit have a Max MJ per tick they can transfer? I am setting up a system on a server with about 200 biogas engines so about 1000MJ /Tick. Just wanting to see if there is any Max so I am not losing anything.

There may be a limit to how much they can input/output from the power network at a single point, but there doesn't seem to be a total transfer limit (or if there is, it's ridiculously high). I was playing around with power converters in creative to see their limits (I was using a quantum generator set to 32,768 EU/t as the input), and the conduits at the output would happily transfer the resulting ~12.8k MJ/t (after the 5% conduit loss) along a one-wide length to the receiving energy cells. If there is a limit to what they can receive at a single point, I can definitely say that a given length of conduit can receive at least 500 MJ/t per face, and at least 1000 MJ/t total (I don't know for sure if the limiting factor was the conduits or the power converters, but I had conduits hooked up to adjacent faces of two separate BC energy producers, transferring 500 MJ/t out of each face).

 

[Vaygrim]

All I know is (from personal experience) energy can actually build up to a maximum limit in Gold Conductive Pipes, and EXPLODE! Scared the CRAP out of me, to say the least.

Redstone Conduits don't do this.