Self-sustaining geothermal power?

[malicious_bloke]

I'm currently playing on an Unleashed server. There's no Gregtech (so no Thermal generator, just the IC2 Geothermal generator) but it does have power converters enabled.

I've been looking for any way to make a igneous extruder/magma crucible/geothermal generator combo output more power than it uses, so far with no luck. Is this even possible?

Any help gratefully recieved (also the igneous extruder bit is optional, I can find an alternate source of cobble if necessary)

 

[BananaSplit2]

It technically isn't possible and nowhere profitable enough as machines are set up to consume around the same amount of energy to produce lava than it produces in a geothermal generator. Maybe if you could find a loophole in a mod or a glitch you could be successful, but well, that's kinda cheating.

 

[WayofTime]

This process has been fixed (either through hard-coding or by configs) so that it is not possible to get infinite free power, even if you ask nicely. The source of cobble doesn't matter, but as long as the cost for a bucket of lava is more expensive than what you get for it, there isn't a way.

Better to pump the lava, or switch to solar if you want set-and-forget power. Or set up a tree farm. Frankly, taking the "easy approach" limits so many possibilities, and thus takes a lot of fun out of your systems!

 

[Hydra]

Any past and future energy loops have/will be fixed anyway, so there's no point in relying on them.

 

[Omicron]

There's plenty of easy to set up ways to get infinite energy with zero input, especially with Powercrystals mods. Just grab a simple MFR farm, make MFR biofuel, burn it and (if necessary) send the energy through Power Converters. The only limit is the throughput based on the size of your farm. Need more? Make it bigger.

 

[malicious_bloke]

Oh well, that's a bit of a disappointment but I guess it makes sense.

Suppose i'll have to generate power the sensible way then...

Cheers for the responses

 

[sks0315]

MFR lava fabricater makes lava with 20kMJ. BC combustion engine makes 20kMJ with lava.
Dartcraft force engine with water makes 20kMJ with lava, but with milk as throttle, you will get 25kMJ with lava.
But net gain is 5kMJ, and 0.25MJ/t. Maybe better off by making water mills..

 

[namiasdf]

Well, for a player like me, if the gains are only 0.25 MJ/t it might be a worthwhile project to go for.

Design wise you'll have to create a plan that can be easily expandable over time, as to scale your system up. Realize that even four modules of this system only provides an extra MJ/t. I am sure that these low rates are created by design as infinite energy should be, in general, low-power and materials heavy. This is the case for most energy loops/infinite energy blocks.

I'd say go for it if you're ambitious. You'll have to make a lot of these and the intrinsic difficult in designing a system that can be expanded to meet your needs will hopefully provide some entertainment. Given the low values, efficiency is also of great concern, adding to the challenge.

Do it, report back, get kudoos points.