Power generation using lava and water.

[Dex Luther]

I took a break from Minecrafting for a little while, and came back recently to mess around when I have a few minutes free.

I remember seeing on one of direwolf's videos, and I swear I remember using this machine once too. The machine I'm talking about, but for the life of me can't remember the name of, is a machine that you surrounded with either:

• 3 or 4 blocks of water and one block of lava underneath.
• 3 or 4 blocks of lava and one block of water underneath.

Which one it is I don't remember. One of these setups gave very little power, but stringing a few of them together could become a pretty good power source.

I know this machine exists, but I can't remember what it's called or even what mod it's from. I'm thinking thermal expansion, but I've looked through all the items from that mod and none of them seem to fit the bill.

I've tried Google searching the only words that come to mind "Geothermal" and "Thermal" and "Generator", and turned up nothing except a bunch of wiki pages for the IC2 Geothermal generator, which isn't at all what I'm looking for.

Help me out someone?

PS: I don't care if YOU think it's a useless item or that YOU think your way of getting a bazzilion EU of free energy per tick is better, so keep the opinions to yourself.

 

[Airship]

That's the RedPower Thermopile, which is used to create small amounts of Blutricity.

Hope this helped!

EDIT: Linky

 

[Gus]

It's called a Thermopile and you can place lava in conjunction with water, snow or ice around it snow and ice will melt but also give more power than lava.

The catch:
they produce Blutricity, which has to be converted to MJ using a Bluelectric engine. A Bluelectric engine can produce up to 32MJ/t (Really Good Power for MJ) but in order to get a Bluelectic engine up to full power you would need about 1600 Thermopiles all working at the same time... or you could use about 160 Bluelectric solar panels (Renewable), or use about 16 Kenetic Generators with wooden wind turbines. (Also Renewable, but require lots of resources)

So in terms of Blutricity: Thermopiles < Solar Panels < Kenetic Generators

EDIT: Not stating my opinion, just the facts.

 

[Dex Luther]

Thanks both of you! Fortunately I don't need a lot of power. Just enough to power a few frame motors that are hidden underground. Perfect thing for keeping a constant power supply in a small space.

 

[natnif36]

That's exactly what they were made for!

But wait - a thermopile is 10x less powerful that the solars?

That seems a lot, but I guess considering they can be stacked vertically...

And the wind turbines will eat string like no tomorrow, and iron, to a significantly lesser extent.

 

[Gus]

It is about* 10x less powerful:
A Thermopile produces 0.375 amps/Thermopile
A Solar Panel produces 2 amps/Solar Panel, only during the day
Supposedly a Kenetic Generator with a Wooden Wind Turbine produces 10x more than a solar panel but I am unsure because I just heard it from playing on a server.
(pretty unrealiable)