Moving a power stack over to AE

[PhilHibbs]

My power system currently consists of the following:

1. Steve's Carts tree farm
LOGS
2. Router stuffing logs into...
3. 24 Furnaces powered by Furnace Heaters powered by Solar Generators
4. Item Tesseract sending charcoal to...
5. 36HP solid fuel Steam Boiler
...and...
6. Router stuffs charcoal into...
7. 24 Generators feeding an MFSU
SAPLINGS
8. Filter & RP Pneumatics feeding 4 Fermenters
9. Biomass tank, 2 Distilleries, Biofuel tank
10. 2x36HP liquid fuel boilers
11. 54xIndustrial Steam Engines

I'm toying around with AE trying to work out if I like it or not. I'm really not sure yet.

The problem is, the current system relies on natural choke points. The furnaces fill up with charcoal and logs, and more logs won't go in until the charcoal has somewhere to go. When some charcoal goes into the SFB or generators, then the router can put more wood in as space becomes available. If I suck everything into AE, then I will just be generating infinte charcoal until I run out of disk space.

So what's my solution? Use a level emitter to make sure I don't go overboard on charcoal production, just keeping a healthy buffer amount? I want to keep the SFB topped up all the time, but what about the generators, set the first MFSU to emit when empty and use the signal to allow charcoal through into the Router?

I don't want to tear down my existing system until I have a reasonable idea how to build a replacement.

 

[Loufmier]

if charcoal is unlimited and excessive i`d consider to void/incinerate/throw into lava the overflow. and i also consider changing those 24 generators to 2nd boiler.

 

[PhilHibbs]

if charcoal is unlimited and excessive i`d consider to void/incinerate/throw into lava the overflow. and i also consider changing those 24 generators to 2nd boiler.

And hook it up to a steam generator, and replace the turbines when they wear out? Maybe. I guess that would require automating my steel production.

Also, rather than voiding excess charcoal, voiding excess logs would be more efficient. That's what I do at the moment, any excess logs overflow into lava via transposer.

I wonder if I should use Level Emitters to pause my Steve's Cart, so it stops chopping down trees when I have sufficient logs and saplings and apples.

 

[arentol]

Logs to Charcoal is 1 to 1. So if you expect to end up flooded with Charcoal then limiting Charcoal production will just result in the system being flooded with logs instead. Also, if your current system isn't flooded with logs then you don't have to worry, the AE version won't be flooded with logs or charcoal either.

If it were me I would do as Loufmier suggests and set up a second boiler. I would use it with an energy bridge (Steam consumer, Bridge, HV producer) to feed the MSFU, rather than regular generators. Set the boiler up with a 1 block gap between it and your other solid fuel boiler. Then put a chest between the two firebox's and have AE dump charcoal into that. The boilers will pull from it automatically.

If after doing all this you find your biggest annoyance is not having wood on hand because your logs keep getting turned into charcoal, just start reducing the number of furnaces you are using until your wood supply starts to grow very very slowly. When you do this just make sure your charcoal supplies are also slowly growing as well, because if they are going negative you will eventually have issues. But I doubt that will be the case. (Or better yet, set up some sawmills and switch over to fueling the system with planks, which ensures a constant supply of wood for other stuff, and produces more heat energy per log).

 

[Loufmier]

And hook it up to a steam generator, and replace the turbines when they wear out? Maybe. I guess that would require automating my steel production.

i havent found better use for unlimited supply of charcoal other than SFB. if there is no means to convert MJ/Steam into EU i.e. power converters, then yes.
you can just add more generators but you will need a system to distribute charcoal evenly among them, to achieve somewhat fast rate of consuming it and increasing rate of power gen. the only mod i know, that can do such distribution is logistic pipes. but boiler is simply better.

 

[PhilHibbs]

If it were me I would do as Loufmier suggests and set up a second boiler. I would use it with an energy bridge (Steam consumer, Bridge, HV producer) to feed the MSFU, rather than regular generators.

I don't have Power Converters (Direwolf20 pack), and I don't think I'd use it if I did.

 

[Loufmier]

I don't have Power Converters (Direwolf20 pack), and I don't think I'd use it if I did.

then steam turbine if fuel efficiency does matter and steel consumption is not.
the other option is a bank of generators, but its efficiency and generation rate is rather low.

 

[Lohengrin]

If you have access to MFR, make a Deep Storage Unit. Export BUS to DSU to suck all the charcoal into it, then replace the export BUS with a storage BUS and ghost a piece of charcoal in it. System should then pipe all charcoal into the DSU and you can access the charcoal from the AE system. Basically acts as a almost limitless storage disk for charcoal. Once you get to 2 billion charcoal, make another...
I have DSUs for cobble, dirt, saplings, and logs off to the side for this reason. You can even wall them off so as not to see them. You can access them, but really, why would you. When you or anything connected requests charcoal, it comes from the DSU, so no reason to even have to see it. Anything that accumulates in a large amount you can do this for, freeing up a huge amount of bytes for your AE system. Though honestly I run out of item types well before bytes, but there you go. Free of overload worries, your system can just chug along shoving charcoal in there.
Make a meta game out of it and see how much charcoal you can get up too. Let us know when you get to 1 billion...

Make sure to switch your BUS to stack mode, otherwise you will stare at it a long time as it moves individual pieces over BTW

 

[egor66]

I would setup 2 HP boilers one run off the charcoal the other a liquid running of fuel from fermenter "ethanol now" use your biomass that way there is no waste, all gets used up & produces power, & maybe even replace the generators with RC turbine to produce 200eu pt to run mass fab or what ever off.

note: you will not need more than 5 TE furnaces, to keep the hp boiler full, 3 should do after the burn in.

what I am tryin to say is you can make the same amount of power with a much smaller foot print, & AE will help keep all automated & running well if you go that route.

I do love renewable systems.