Problems with automated ore Processing

[Hydra]

Yeah, that's because Logistics Pipes don't have a constant energy drain. They only use power when items are passing through, unlike Applied Energistics. Probably the biggest upside of LP is that, if you ever run out of power, you can still access your storage.

I have a "low power mode" lever that I can switch that basically disconnects everything but the drives and storage busses. This allows me to run off a filled cell for quite some time.

Protip: don't store the cell in the storage system that you need to power with said cell. Causes a bit of an annoying chicken / egg situation

I actually have multiple layers of redundancy in my base. I have a bunch of combustion engines that I can use when (for some reason) my farms fail and the supply of charcoal to my boilers end. And I have a set of liquid fuel boilers that aren't used with 2 full steel RC tanks, one with fuel and one with ethanol. So I think I'm good

 

[angelnc]

I have a "low power mode" lever that I can switch that basically disconnects everything but the drives and storage busses. This allows me to run off a filled cell for quite some time.

I'm planning to implement such a low power mode for my base too. But fully automated with either a lot of level emitters or CC. Haven't decided yet.

 

[Niels Henriksen]

Im planning to get power from many differnet things. All power is been distributed by tesseracts (yes I know about the loss) and my farms run on one freq., storage on another freq. etc.

 

[PhilHibbs]

Im planning to get power from many differnet things. All power is been distributed by tesseracts (yes I know about the loss) and my farms run on one freq., storage on another freq. etc.

I don't get why people have multiple power frequencies. Surely the system is more robust with just one? That way if you run out of lava, you don't lose access to your storage. If your tree farm gets blown up by an army of ninja creepers (or a careless right-click with a mining laser), you don't lose your pulverizers and furnaces.

I currently have just one power system, a bank of boring old nether-lava-powered engines (my excuse is, I've never used nether lava before, so it's "new" to me). When I set up a couple of other systems - a charcoal system from a tree farm, and a biofuel system from an MFR harvester - I'll have a Redstone Energy Cell between the generators and the tesseracts, and a gate that checks "Energy empty, redstone signal" and a wireless redstone signal to a bank of warning lights telling me what has gone down.

 

[Niels Henriksen]

I don't get why people have multiple power frequencies. Surely the system is more robust with just one?

There are several reasons to that I'm doing it:

1) I can shut down one part of my base when needed.
2) I have control on how much the different parts of my base is using - I have tried that my AE storage was dead because my mobfarm was using all my power.
3) I like to have a good overview of my system.

I have right now boilers with engines where I can turn of the engines to each boiler. All engines are sending energy to all Redstone Energy Cells that are connected to their own Tesseract. In this way I can take down a boiler without shutting down entire base.

 

[PhilHibbs]

2) I have control on how much the different parts of my base is using - I have tried that my AE storage was dead because my mobfarm was using all my power.

There is a lack of tools for monitoring and reacting to energy production. It would be nice to be able to monitor how much power is available and to shut down parts of a system when it drops.

 

[Niels Henriksen]

There is a lack of tools for monitoring and reacting to energy production. It would be nice to be able to monitor how much power is available and to shut down parts of a system when it drops.

Yes or to start up extra power when needed

 

[PhilHibbs]

At the moment I have a gate conditional "Can store energy" on a Redstone Energy Cell, and that goes via red pipe wire to gates that turn on my engines. However, the engines are basically running all the time because there's always energy being drawn. Maybe I should use a double buffer - gate on the first REC set to turn the engines on when it's empty, and some kind of timer that keeps the engines on for a few minutes. If my engines can generate, say, twice as much power as I'm using on idle, that should mean 1 minute on and 1 minute off, which is better than the pipe wire constantly flickering. Of course once I've got my first 36HP boiler up and running that can just be left on all the time.

 

[Hydra]

There is a lack of tools for monitoring and reacting to energy production. It would be nice to be able to monitor how much power is available and to shut down parts of a system when it drops.

TE Energy cells with gates work just fine.

 

[angelnc]

At the moment I have a gate conditional "Can store energy" on a Redstone Energy Cell, and that goes via red pipe wire to gates that turn on my engines. However, the engines are basically running all the time because there's always energy being drawn. Maybe I should use a double buffer - gate on the first REC set to turn the engines on when it's empty, and some kind of timer that keeps the engines on for a few minutes. If my engines can generate, say, twice as much power as I'm using on idle, that should mean 1 minute on and 1 minute off, which is better than the pipe wire constantly flickering. Of course once I've got my first 36HP boiler up and running that can just be left on all the time.

I have a CC Script doing this, if you're interested. It might need some adjustment for your needs, but worked quite well for me.

 

[Ember Quill]

At the moment I have a gate conditional "Can store energy" on a Redstone Energy Cell, and that goes via red pipe wire to gates that turn on my engines. However, the engines are basically running all the time because there's always energy being drawn. Maybe I should use a double buffer - gate on the first REC set to turn the engines on when it's empty, and some kind of timer that keeps the engines on for a few minutes. If my engines can generate, say, twice as much power as I'm using on idle, that should mean 1 minute on and 1 minute off, which is better than the pipe wire constantly flickering. Of course once I've got my first 36HP boiler up and running that can just be left on all the time.

What I did was have it turn on my engines when the cell was empty, and turn them off when it got full (as long as you're generating more than is being used, it WILL be full for at least a moment).

Unfortunately, using gates (unless you have a double-buffer of some kind), there will be brief moments when the energy cell is empty but the engines haven't started refilling yet (which is REALLY noticeable if you use any engines with warmup periods). I actually switched from gates to a ComputerCraft computer to solve this problem. With the OpenPeripheral mod that is included in Unleashed (I'm not sure if it's in any other modpacks though), you can read the exact amount of MJ stored in a redstone energy cell. So I set it up to start my engines when the cell fell below 10% capacity, and stop them when it was above 90%. I even set up a monitor to show how much power was in each of the four cells I had, and whether the engines were currently running.

Spoiler

 

[PhilHibbs]

Oh, I'd completely forgotten about OpenPeripherals. Thanks, I'll do some coding myself!