n00b Pr0bz/Power questions

[DreamBound]

So I wrote up this super long thread and then it didn't send and I don't have the heart to right it all up again, so I'll just do an outline.

So, I started to make a base, and I was basically gonna copy Bdoubleo100, but decided against it.
Instead, I've decided to make a gigantic floating island. Steam punk style.
But with a giant island, comes the need for giant power sources.
Now, I could do a fusion reactor, or a nuclear reactor, or dozens of solar panels, or a bunch of steam boilers, but I wanted to do something different.
So my plan.
Water Mills. Like a billion of them.

So here's where you guys come in.
My plan:

A 16x16 platform.
Then one thick wall of glass, then 8 thick with water, then a one thick wall making a total of 26x26 platform. Oh. And it would me like 40 blocks tall.
So how many water mills could I fit in there?
And if I run the cable through them, will the power transfer through?

 

[Yusunoha]

actually, watermills are pretty old way of getting power. back in 1.2.5 people often used it with RP to make a small IC2 power setup, but back then people didn't care for too much power.

as for your setup, technically it should work, but you'll basically need to place a whole bunch of batboxes with them to prevent energy loss.
because a copper cable loses 1EU every 5 blocks, and the amount of power a watermill generates is so low, that if you'd send that energy for more then 5 copper cables, the energy would vanish

now if you're building in the sky anways, I'd rather suggest using windmills instead of watermills

 

[Loufmier]

use ultra low current cable aka tin cable, or glass fiber for your setup and you`ll be fine.
watermills with rp setup was a decent design and rather unique, compared to solar and lava, but it was laggy as hell too. i remeber a server admin removing such setup that had about 200 watermills.

a steam punk style island without steam boilers? that makes me a sad panda.

 

[DreamBound]

Noes,
The island won't be powered with steam, but the sky ships will be :3
I might do some windmills too.
Thanks for the idea
Didn't think of it before c;

 

[atheneftw]

actually, watermills are pretty old way of getting power. back in 1.2.5 people often used it with RP to make a small IC2 power setup, but back then people didn't care for too much power.

as for your setup, technically it should work, but you'll basically need to place a whole bunch of batboxes with them to prevent energy loss.
because a copper cable loses 1EU every 5 blocks, and the amount of power a watermill generates is so low, that if you'd send that energy for more then 5 copper cables, the energy would vanish

now if you're building in the sky anways, I'd rather suggest using windmills instead of watermills

he can use tin cable, loss is much lower, but no batboxes then or it will blow up

 

[Loufmier]

he can use tin cable, loss is much lower, but no batboxes then or it will blow up

such wording may be misleading. he can get away with not using a bat box, but it`d make more sense to use it for power conservation and possible spikes in power consumption. i hope he knows how package system works, but loss of 1 tin cable isnt much for understanding. some people learned it harder way

 

[atheneftw]

such wording may be misleading. he can get away with not using a bat box, but it`d make more sense to use it for power conservation and possible spikes in power consumption. i hope he knows how package system works, but loss of 1 tin cable isnt much for understanding. some people learned it harder way

but many batboxes can be expensive, just saying

 

[DreamBound]

Whoa. As I said n00b Pr0bz.
Can you explain that slower?
Do I need Batboxes to preserve power before sending it to a few MFE's or MFSU's?
Or no?

 

[Loufmier]

Whoa. As I said n00b Pr0bz.
Can you explain that slower?
Do I need Batboxes to preserve power before sending it to a few MFE's or MFSU's?
Or no?

if you know about mfsu and mfe, that thing that i`d recommend to link all that windmills to couple of mfsus and then use glass fibre to carry whenever you want. just dont forget to step down package size when needed

 

[Vovk]

IC2 cables lose power per packet over a certain number of blocks.

for copper cable power loss is 1 every 5.

for tin it is 1 every 40.

Tin has a max packet size of 1 and so a batbox outputting to tin cable will fry the cable. Tin can still go INTO a batbox, but batbox out has to be at least copper.

In the previous posts they are describing a way to get around the 1 energy loss every 5 blocks with copper by putting batboxes every 5 meters to reset the counter. Alternately you could use glass fibre cable and have a batbox every 40 meters (glass fiber is 1 loss every 40 with max packet size 512)

IC2 power sources output energy in packets. Windmills/watermills output 1 eu per tick packet sizes (though the amount of energy per packet can be anywhere between 0 and 1 eu). This means that watermills outputting to copper cable can only go 5 blocks before becoming useless. Even if you have 10000 windmills outputting to the same cable somehow, it will still only travel 5 blocks and then vanish into the air, because the packets do NOT combine and every packet is just size 1.

 

[DreamBound]

Thanks a lot guys!
Time to get to building