Mekanism Power requirements

[The Skeptical Tech]

So I just got into mekanism rather than IC2 in my custom pack, and I love the potential.

I set up elite factories for ore tripling, and upgraded everything to 9x speed. Wow is it fast, and 7 at a time.

And then I noticed things slowed waaaaay down, so I checked my Resonant energy cell.

.

Oh.....my.....

Yeah, when maxed, equipment is using 20kj/t total. My setup of 12 or so magmatic dynamos just wasn't cutting it. It's 2.5 j per rf, so I'm going to need 8000rf, or 100 magmatics....

I tried switching to heat generators, but holy cow, three of them use lava fast, much faster than I can pump with a buildcraft pump / endertank. I guess I can use them passively, but that's going to be a lot of lava sitting around.

First thing I'm going to do is back off on the speed upgrades, then build my power system back up to a ridiculous level, probably a boiler or something.

 

[LeoMC]

Check out the enderthemic pump.

 

[The Skeptical Tech]

I checked the description, and it says it matches the performance of a buildcraft pump.

I need more lava faster.

 

[Golrith]

Depends on what is in your pack, you might have to investigate alternative power options to lava.
The "smoothest" would be the Big Reactors mod, as that generates RF, is a multiblock structure, and isn't that hard to get started with but has a lot of extras to allow to make a really complex system.

 

[KhrFreak]

you did put energy upgrades in your factories right? cause i know my elite factories use 200 rf/t each so it's only 800 rf/t for the whole line not 20k

 

[YX33A]

Yeah, you're seeing a normal thing there; at 9X speed(roughly 9X, it's more of a... Well, unupgraded it takes ten seconds a process and at "9X speed" it takes 1 second per process), it takes 10 times the power per cycle.
So it's 10 times faster and takes ten times the power with max speed upgrades. Better either crank up your power generation, or more realistically, just use it less often.

Also, ore tripling. Heh, got a long ways to go to reach your full potential in Mek, bro. It has 5X ore processing. Super complex 5X ore processing.
(and it's not as easy as RotaryCraft's system where once you understand the mechanics and use decent engines, you can get roughly 5X on everything, plus more if the ore normally drops as a item, and even more if you use a Nether Ore variant, except for Nether Iridium oddly enough, which has the default 75% chance where as the GT overworld variant has a 125% chance IIRC)

 

[Revemohl]

Actually, with 9 speed upgrades, Mek machines use 100x more power. Eek. With 9 energy upgrades, they use 1/10 of power (using machines at 2 RF/t or the Digital Miner at around 8 RF/t is slow, but fun).
So, with 9 of both, your stuff still use 10 times more energy. 200 RF/t is considerably more manageable than 2000, so go get so energy upgrades.

 

[Bahnmor]

You're using Mekanism anyway, why not switch power gen over to the hydrogen generators? They produce a decent amount of power, though each one needs its own electrolytic separator to supply the gas. I think I have a bank of six running off a single aqueous accumulator.

 

[YX33A]

Actually, with 9 speed upgrades, Mek machines use 100x more power. Eek. With 9 energy upgrades, they use 1/10 of power (using machines at 2 RF/t or the Digital Miner at around 8 RF/t is slow, but fun).
So, with 9 of both, your stuff still use 10 times more energy. 200 RF/t is considerably more manageable than 2000, so go get so energy upgrades.

It's 100 times more for the same amount of time, of which you only run it for 10% of the normal time, meaning they only use x10 times more power per cycle. Not cheap, no, but a increase of such a order of magnitude.

You're using Mekanism anyway, why not switch power gen over to the hydrogen generators? They produce a decent amount of power, though each one needs its own electrolytic separator to supply the gas. I think I have a bank of six running off a single aqueous accumulator.

Because those are boring and unrealistic? Those are the main issues(my reason is the former, a discussion was held on the latter reason, and they were right).

I guess the real question here is why OP doesn't switch over to XU Lava Generators(can't remember what they are called). Don't they output more power the longer you run them?

 

[MoosyDoosy]

Try out the Big Reactors mod. And while I'm suggesting it why not suggest this handy little link...?
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0An54qOfSiXfJdEcyaHAxWURaZTR2eEpEWEFaU0xydXc#gid=0
Otherwise I would make a bunch of Railcraft Steam Boilers linked to a ton of Steam Dynamos. Another simple solution.

 

[Not_Steve]

snip

I noticed in the op that you referenced it in terms of kilojoules and joules. This implies that you have you machines showing mekanism power instead of rf. The way to change this is to go to the config for mekanism and there should be a line that says energytype=j and if you switch that j to rf it will display energy in rf everywhere in mekanism. You could also change it to Mj or EU if you wanted your power system to display like that...[/quote]

 

[Vasa]

By putting only speed upgrades you will bump your power usage up to 2000 RF/t.
So put 9x energy upgrade to lower it to 200 RF/t.

 

[The Skeptical Tech]

I noticed in the op that you referenced it in terms of kilojoules and joules. This implies that you have you machines showing mekanism power instead of rf. The way to change this is to go to the config for mekanism and there should be a line that says energytype=j and if you switch that j to rf it will display energy in rf everywhere in mekanism. You could also change it to Mj or EU if you wanted your power system to display like that...

[/quote]
Oh, cool. Thanks!

Energy upgrades decrease power use? I thought they increased the power buffer.

 

[Vasa]

Oh, cool. Thanks!

Energy upgrades decrease power use? I thought they increased the power buffer.

Yeah its bit confusing

 

[Padfoote]

Energy upgrades decrease power use? I thought they increased the power buffer.

IIRC, they do both.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Some ideas for power generation:

1) Hydrogen Generators. They are amazing. They will need one Electrolytic Separator each. These can be powered with Heat Generators surrounded by lava for passive energy to run the ES's to fuel the HydroGens. This will at least get your foot in the door, power wise, until you can get into Big Reactors.

2) Big Reactors. Seriously, this is the go-to mod for macro-scale power generation. There's plenty of guides out there for it, look them up and see what you need.

3) RC Boiler + Steam Dynamos. No need for the RC steam engines anymore, Steam Dynamos can run off of the steam from the boilers. It's boring, overdone, inefficient, and requires a couple of tree farms to keep it supplied... but it can be done.

Also, DO NOT forget the energy upgrades, as has been mentioned multiple times.

 

[RavynousHunter]

If you don't mind a somewhat larger build, you could have a MFR tree farm running MFR bio fuel machines (Bio Reactor and Bio-Fuel Generator, methinks) and producing charcoal for boilers or somesuch. Seriously, though, outside of going nuclear thru either Big Reactors or Atomic Science, MFR Bio-Fuel is the way to go for renewable power.

 

[TheCupcakeisaLie]

If you have rotarycraft, which is really awesome and you should add it, you can get about 6k RF with a jet engine+rotational dynamo. Or get reactorcraft fusion reactor and produce 5mil+ rf so you can drop a stack of speed upgrades in your factories.

Sent from my RM-917_nam_usa_100 using Tapatalk

 

[Revemohl]

Some ideas for power generation:
3) RC Boiler + Steam Dynamos. No need for the RC steam engines anymore, Steam Dynamos can run off of the steam from the boilers. It's boring, overdone, inefficient, and requires a couple of tree farms to keep it supplied... but it can be done.

4) Big Reactor with an active coolant port + steam dynamos/big turbine. Requires slightly more infra-structure, but worth using if you really like steam but can't be bothered to use Railcraft anymore.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

4) Big Reactor with an active coolant port + steam dynamos/big turbine. Requires slightly more infra-structure, but worth using if you really like steam but can't be bothered to use Railcraft anymore.

Well, that ties back to #2 really. If you're going to be going Big Reactor, using it to make steam isn't going to be very efficient considering how much copper each steam dynamo eats up. But sure, you could do that if you wanted to.