Is there a showcase of a self powered Forestry farm?

[John Freeman]

I've had some plans and ideas before trying to create a self powered forestry farm. I found seed oil from wheat farms seem to produce enough fuel to keep themselves going, but was wondering how I could combine that with a tree farm to both make its own humus and create enough biofuel to power the rest. The closest I've got still ended up at a slight loss in the end with 4 wheat farms with lillypads of fertility combined with 2 tree farms.

Does anyone have a showcase of this being pulled off? I've though of mulitfarms but not sure if it would actually help at all.

 

[Omicron]

The old forestry farms have power issues... they can easily consume ten times as much as they actually need to run if you feed them that much. As such, if you want to self-power them, you should not send energy around, but rather fuel. One dedicated biogas engine per farm at 5 MJ/t, not connected to any others, is more than enough.

With multifarms it's easier because they don't actually consume energy while idling. Or well, 1 MJ every 10 seconds or so, but that's pretty much equal to "nothing". Only when working a block - planting, harvesting etc - do they consume energy. Multifarms work exceptionally well with trickle power, often doing just fine on 1-2 MJ/t.

If you struggle to get enough biofuel, by the way, look at railcraft. Build a treefarm, place down a Thermal Expansion sawmill. Pump logs from the treefarm into it, which turns them into six planks, which have more fuel value than the logs themselves. Then build a solid fuel boiler fueled with the planks, and use that to generate MJ.

 

[cynric]

With multifarms it's easier because they don't actually consume energy while idling. Or well, 1 MJ every 10 seconds or so, but that's pretty much equal to "nothing". Only when working a block - planting, harvesting etc - do they consume energy. Multifarms work exceptionally well with trickle power, often doing just fine on 1-2 MJ/t.

I failed to do that with a peat farm test. Dropped a full energy cell for the farm to get it started, pointed a peat engine at the energy cell, let the whole thing run and over time, the redstone cell drained completely and the whole farm died due to lack of energy. Granted, it was only a small farm, maybe the energy efficiency of bigger farms is better.

 

[Omicron]

Counter-example: Powering a minimum size tree farm with a 1 LP boiler, yielding 2 MJ/t, caused the redstone cell to fill up and the engine would have stalled if I hadn't siphoned energy off. Also note that I said "most farms are fine", not "all farms are fine". Farms have different energy needs not only based on their size, but also based on their type (and in the case of orchards and arboretums, also what kind of trees they are working with).

That said, in my test worlds, my peat farms were extremely slow and potentially the farm type that required the least power of them all. Are you sure you were not having that bug where the multifarm gets stuck on trying to build irrigation holes, and cycles endlessly without making any progress?

 

[cynric]

That said, in my test worlds, my peat farms were extremely slow and potentially the farm type that required the least power of them all. Are you sure you were not having that bug where the multifarm gets stuck on trying to build irrigation holes, and cycles endlessly without making any progress?

That might be it, I didn't even know such a bug existed, however the layout looked strange. The farm did produce some peat though, but I guess if it never finished building then the power consumption would just be crazy for no benefit.

 

[Celestialphoenix]

Self powered forestry farm ... as long as you keep a supply of apitite fertaliser handy right?

 

[cynric]

Self powered forestry farm ... as long as you keep a supply of apitite fertaliser handy right?

There are ways with other mods around that, however from what I understand, the amount of fertilizer required is rather small, a hopper full of that stuff should last a long time. And to be honest, with my current game and everything is completely self sufficient, it is easy to waste just as much time managing all that crap that you will never ever need again as it is to fill some farm from time to time. Wouldn't trust such a farm to keep a boiler stocked though, not going to risk a blackout, ae systems shutting down, stuff overflowing everywhere just because I forgot to refill the fertilizer.