How much EU is a BC fuel bucket worth in a steam boiler?

[Abdiel]

No, the efficiency of electrical engines is plain horrible (as it should be).

 

[Hydra]

If this is the case, could you not also do this?
Lava->Geothermal Generator->EU->Electric Engines->MJ->Magma crucible->Lava

And end up with more power than you started with? I haven't looked at the numbers, just theoretical.

Well it's pretty obvous you haven't looked at it

Lava > geothermal = 20k eu

A magma crucible takes 20mj to melt cobble into lava

So here it's 1:1

However, Electric Engines are inefficient and use 5eu to provide 2mj worth of power. So you would not be gaining anything, you'd actually lose over half of it.

The other way around you can convert 1 MJ to 1 EU though. That's why I prefer MJ based systems because they're more fun to build and you can quite easily convert MJ to EU. I do this here:

Spoiler

2 geothermals fed by 2 magma crucibles fed by 2 igneous extruders. They power my 8 recyclers (fed from 8 ignious extruders) and some other IC2 stuff I barely use. The power is coming from my 36HP boiler.