Redstone energy cell - best way to charge?

[ATJ]

I'm just experimenting with Thermal Expansion for the first time as I want to try out the redstone energy cells with a filler and a quarry. I (wrongly) assumed that it was the molten redstone that "became" the energy inside them, but having just turned my empty storage frame into a redstone one by feeding some molten redstone into it, I see that its internal energy is still 0.

So what is the best/quickest way to charge these up? I've just made a redstone conduit pipe and hooked up an electric engine to it running off my MFSU but it is filling up soooooooo slowly. What is the usual method to charge these things? I am quite the IC2 fan and have several ultimate solars running so I'm wondering if there's some way of charging them up from those? I am using the Beta pack.

 

[kcbanner]

I have a 36 LP boiler with several of the top tier steam engines (8 MJ/t) connected via conduits to my redstone cell.

 

[Vilmos]

Well if you are overflowing with EU then just keep making more electric engines and plug them into the redstone conduits! Personally I use the LP boiler as well running on charcoal from the tree farm.

 

[nevakanezah]

To answer your question literally:
The fastest way would be to have an infinitely large array of fully fuelled 36HP boilers piping steam into sixteen mystcraft void ages, wherein identically infinite arrays of commercial steam engines pipe energy into a single energy conduit, leading back to your base to charge a single redstone energy cell.

Spoiler

But you're still limited to 150 MJ/t input

 

[Icarus White]

Also, look into circuit board upgrades - although this isn't documented very well on the wiki, so here goes:

Make a soldering iron, then use it - you'll pull up a little interface where you can stick a Forestry Circuit board and some electron tubes. Small boards can only accept one tube, medium boards two, large boards three. (Assuming Beta even has a soldering iron - I forget.)

I believe the tubes you can use are Iron, Tin, Copper, and Bronze - each has a different property, and in particular Bronze tubes give Electric Boost II - each will upgrade output by 4 MJ/t while increasing input by 15 EU/t. However, you can only use at most (2) per board. An Iron tube reduces input by 1 EU/t, but you can only attach (1). Tin is Electric Boost I - +2 MJ/t, +7 EU/t. Using a large board, two bronze tubes and a tin tube will give you 12 MJ/t for each engine - at a cost of 43 EU/t (!). Still, if you've got an insane solar array going, this is the most power possible per engine.

You can then stick the upgraded board into the engine. Careful, though - you'll need the soldering iron to pull it out, and if you ever want to reprogram the board, you'll have to add all the tubes on all over again.

(Of course, like Vilmos said, you could just stick several unupgraded engines onto the same redstone conduit / gold conductive pipe, and hook up the cell to that. This will allow you to dedicate more engines to a single cell, and is far more EU-efficient. Conduits have a fixed 5% loss, if I remember correctly, while gold pipes lose 0.1% per metre - but gold pipes WILL explode if you leave a loop in the circuit.)

 

[ATJ]

Thanks guys. Unfortunately I don't have any steam power or boilers set up yet. I think the electric engine route is probs the best way to go for now then. And @ Icarus, yes I'll make a chip for each one. I already have the upgrade chip in my quarry so know how to make them, I was just wondering if there was a sort of preferred method to charge up the REC.

By the way, I read in another recent thread that the quarry can supposedly now run at 50 MJ/t. Is this just in the 1.4.6 packs or the Beta as well? I hooked up my full REC to my new quarry and while it did make the frame ridiculously quick at 50 MJ/t on the REC, once it actually starts quarrying there is no noticeable difference in speed between 10 MJ/t or 50 MJ/t.

 

[Icarus White]

Wait, wait, the quarry takes chips now? Whoa... gotta get me some of that!

And yes, the quarry can work at up to 50 MJ/t in the more recent (read: non-Beta) versions.

(For reference, most people just use MJ recharging directly - it's a lot easier to set up than an ultimate solar array, and some people feel like Advanced Solars are kinda OP. So that would be magmatic, biogas, combustion and steam engines. In your case though, if you've got EU to throw at the wall, you might as well use it, right?)

 

[MrSwisstobi]

@Vilmos like that? ^^

Spoiler

1 stack (64) electrical engines
= 128 MJ/t
= -450EU/t

 

[MilConDoin]

450 EU for 128 MJ while using 64 engines? Sounds strange.
64 engines should produce 128 MJ for 384 EU if unchanged, or for 320 EU if used with the efficiency upgrade.
With two booster II upgrades they should produce 10 MJ each for 36 EU each for 130 MJ for 468 EU with only 13 engines.

 

[Vilmos]

Wow now that is enough power for anything I would need in my next 50 minecraft years!

Looking good though!

 

[Icarus White]

Wait a second. I'm pretty sure wooden conductive pipes can only draw from one engine at a time.
Are half of those engines idle?

 

[Vilmos]

Nah that can't be, I've put multiple engines on wooden conductive pipes since back in 1.25 days.

 

[MrSwisstobi]

uhh my bad, 450EU/t would be with 75 engines => 150mj/t

i have 64
64*6EU/t without upgrades
= 384

 

[Bluehorazon]

Well I normally use Redpower to charge the energy-cells. The good thing about redpower is that the solars do not conflict with any other stuff. They only need Silver, Nicolite, Coal and Sand, although you need 2 of them to produce as much MJ as a Solarpanel they are incredibly cheap and easy to set up. Combined with a Windmill they even produce a lot of energy during rain. Based on your design you can link up to 100 Solars to a single Blulectric-Engine, which saves the expensive engines. So although you need more solars you only need way less engines (if you go with the optimal Conversion-Rate of 2:5 you need 1 instead of 16 electric engines).

 

[MrSwisstobi]

well... what needs more space?
16 electrical or 100+ solars? :s
btw, you only need a lot of tin for the engines, the screenshot i've sent you was taken on my server (survival), its not that hard get

 

[Bluehorazon]

well... what needs more space?
16 electrical or 100+ solars? :s
btw, you only need a lot of tin for the engines, the screenshot i've sent you was taken on my server (survival), its not that hard get

Well yes, but tin is a ressource that overlaps with a lot of stuff. Actually it is one of the more rare ressources, but technically the ressources are normally not the bottleneck since you have endless amounts anyway. But even than setting up a redpower system is incredibly more easy, since it requires a lot fewer ressources, so the construction of solars is easier to automate. Of course that is only true if you compare IC2-Solars vs. Redpower-Solars, IC2 Solars are pretty crappy anyway. As soon as you produce energy more compact the electric-engine is a good idea, exspecially since you can turn them off easily if the energy-cells are filled.

 

[MrSwisstobi]

Well yes, but tin is a ressource that overlaps with a lot of stuff. Actually it is one of the more rare ressources, but technically the ressources are normally not the bottleneck since you have endless amounts anyway. But even than setting up a redpower system is incredibly more easy, since it requires a lot fewer ressources, so the construction of solars is easier to automate. Of course that is only true if you compare IC2-Solars vs. Redpower-Solars, IC2 Solars are pretty crappy anyway. As soon as you produce energy more compact the electric-engine is a good idea, exspecially since you can turn them off easily if the energy-cells are filled.

true ya...
but since im using the beta pack A and im waiting for the ultimate.. i cant use redpower

 

[Mero]

I use 8 or 16 magmatic engines getting lava from 1 or 2 magma crucible melting netherrack.

It goes rather quickly if you already have a supply of lava ahead of time. I charged 8 cells at the same time rather quickly with 16 engines

 

[Jakstar19]

You can make 12 electrical engines hooked up to thermal generators which will run on lava (get an auto lava pump station from the nether) and put in a large cirvuit board with 3 bronze electron tubes to increase the output to 16MJ/pt. They that way if you hook up 12 electrical engines you can have 192MJ/pt

 

[OptimalN00B]

Make sure you Create the Energy Cube itself, after you pump the liquid Redstone into the frame, you take the (Now Filled) Cell Frame and it in a crafting GUI with 3 electrum ingots, 2 lead ingots, and a redstone conductance cell. Then take the newly crafted Energy Cell. After that, the energy cell itself is pretty universal in electricity, so hook any number of Engines into it. But there is no "Ultimate" way of charging it. It only has a Max of 100MJ/t input