SENSE AND SUSTAINABILITY; GROWLE’S FTB GUIDE TO RENEWABLE ENERGY

[Growle]

There was a forum post recently where people were discussing some cross mod “exploits” or interactions. It’s hard to call some of these actual exploits due to the fact that when it comes to most of the power in FTB, the ultimate goal seems to be sustainability. Now this is my opinion, but it seems that in FTB, any sustainable method of power generation is not intended to break the game, but rather to allow the player more opportunities to express themselves creatively. It becomes less about farming or searching for fuel, and more about finding the materials for fancier creations, or powering other devices that will further reduce your dependence on the outside world for materials.

SENSE AND SUSTAINABILITY; GROWLE’S FTB GUIDE TO RENEWABLE ENERGY

I'm currently using Ultimate and am taking advantage of the powerconverters mod which is very helpful. Assume that any type of power (EU, MJ, Factorization) can be created by the methods I’ll be listing. I don't believe there is one for Blutricity, but you can still use a “Blulectric engine” to convert it to MJ and go from there. Off the top of my head, some examples of "sustainable" energy would be:

1. Advanced Solar Panels - Build and profit, just have to get the mats. Easy set up and easy to maintain, and as such they cost quite a bit to make. Definitely no longer early / mid-game.

2. Solar Turbine (factorization) - Entry cost of lead and silver with some iron. Set up an area with sunlight and plop these down. Sure they only generate during the day, but you can get a lot more from these than from an array of regular solar panels. With the addition of powerconverters, you can set up some pretty neat solar arrays that are surprisingly effective and look pretty cool.

3. Steam Boiler - Pretty steep entry cost for a full size, in terms of mats for the necessary fuel loops and to get it all together. Once set and fully heated up, you get a solid power return...
Examples of sustainable fuel sources for SOLID fuel boilers: Tree farms and Wither Skeleton farms (possibly Blaze spawner too, but nerf might only make it viable for after the heatup phase).

*** For tree farms you have a lot of options which I'll list at the end of this post to prevent more bloat than is already present...***

Examples of sustainable fuel sources for LIQUID fuel boilers: Farms of (almost) any plant...Wheat, sugarcane etc. Using whatever combination of stills, fermenters, distillers or chemical reactors to create biofuel, methane, or whatever other "bio"fuel that provides heat units, and feeding that to the boiler via cells (use liquid transposer to keep the cells) or pipe.
- Animal farms (cow, pig, chicken) using whatever method your twisted mind can think up to slaughter them and turn their giblets into methane (I like the soul shard method, it's easy and creates soulless animals so I don't feel so bad when they get "processed").
- The oil fabricator: Fuel / oil is not supposed to be sustainable, and therefore it costs a good amount of energy to actually create and further refine. The upside is that if you insist on using fuel for more than just the boiler, and your boiler is fully heated up, then you don't have to pump so much out of the world. The downside to this is that there really isn't any point to it that I can see, at least when it comes to the Ultimate pack. The other methods mentioned will provide more fuel for less energy, since with the oil fabricator you're just USING energy to CREATE energy. So honestly, it's not as game-breaking as people think, it's actually less-so than other methods (at least in my opinion).

4. Generators - Plain old wall of generators being fed from either a tree farm, or a blaze / wither farm is reasonably easy to set up and automate.

5. Gas Turbines - Run best on methane, just make an animal farm or whatever and make sure you can recover your used cells. I'm guessing with this one though, as you do still have to use some energy to centrifuge the meat and I haven't personally tested it’s effectiveness.

6. Thermal Generators + power converters + magma crucibles looped into generators / tanks – Haven’t tested this, but once again, this is using energy to make energy with potentially some extra. In this case it might be wise to set up a redstone energy cube between the magma crucible and the power converter to throttle the amount of power being used by the crucible. For the most bang for your crucible buck it would be best to use netherrack, but that’s not easily sustainable…Cobblestone would work but MIGHT not be worth it. If cobble / nether generation is an issue, you could spend a bit more energy and use a minefactory magma producer, which I believe generates lava off of power alone (don’t quote me on that!).

 

[Growle]

7. Blutricity Solar, kinetic generator, thermopile + blulectric engine - More sustainable energy, but I'm not a huge fan of any of these except the kinetic generators. Why? Cause windmills. The solars are easy to make, but to power 1 blulectric engine to it's max 32mj would take something over 150 of them, whereas about 8-10 kinetic generators can provide the same amount. The stuff needed for the kinetic gens is easy to farm too, just get some flax farms up and replace the blades when they wear out. My friends love their blutricity solars and were surprised at how low their power gen actually is...Also, if you think about it in terms of potential server lag related to energy production, 150 solar panels generating variable power over the course of their existence will invariably put more of a strain on a system than 10 windmills. The only thing someone has to worry about with a large array of windmills would be some graphical lag due to the spinning blades, but whatever. Nobody forced you to buy that E-machine… Just kidding

8. Nuclear Reactor + Radioactive Bees: Still not that many out there that have caught on to this, and you really don’t need fancy bee machines to make radioactive bees. This combination offers potentially infinite uranium, without even considering a separate “breeder” reactor to re-use your old cells. If you wanted to take it a step further, you could aim for plutonium (more power and longer life at the cost of much more HEAT) or thorium cells (much longer life and much less heat at the cost of LESS power). People are afraid of Nuclear reactors due to their explosive potential, but set up properly, they will never explode. If you need help getting one set up I have a little knowledge regarding them, but I won’t go into it here.

9. Water Mills: Easy to set up and relatively low cost for a fairly low amount of power. These can potentially take up a LOT of space depending on how they’re set up, but there are ways around that. I haven’t messed with these excessively beyond some initial tinkering. When placed in open water, you basically want each face to have contact with water for maximum effect (minus the face on whatever wire you use). Some people like to set up ridiculous water towers or dig deep holes with huge trees of mills and flowing water, to get an infinite but relatively small amount of power. There is another method of which I’m not 100% sure still works, and it involves buckets (maybe cells?), and that surprisingly gives you the full EU generation (much more than the mill tree). Easiest way to describe it i: A small infinite water source, a deployer to collect water in buckets, and whatever system of pipes / relays / redstone to send the buckets to and from the mills. Can be creative here to find what works best for you, if you like aqueous accumulators or whatever suits your fancy.

10. Windmills (the EU ones): Easy to set up, infinite wind…They generate variable power that goes from low to somewhat low, and have several dependencies in order to maximize their power return. I’ve never found them worth it, and I was never a fan (no pun intended) of the enormous wind towers that extend into the stratosphere. For the most power return per mill you need to have them spaced out from each other and usually, the higher the mill, the more power you can generate. I remember reading that during storms, or too high up, they have a chance of breaking…I’m not 100% on this, just be aware if you decide to go this route. One other issue will become wiring / power transfer…If not using a method that teleports energy wherever, you’re going to have to wire these, probably with glass cables for their lower EU loss per block. This will cut down the amount of power you get by quite a bit, and cost you whatever it takes to wire the system. In this case, just make water mills or anything else and save yourself the trouble.

11. Lightning Rod: Simple concept here, albeit limited to endgame… Place the crafted block down, put iron fences stacked directly on top to the desired height, and wait for lightning. Materials-wise these are pricey, and their functionality is limited to the frequency of storms. Some people will argue that these can produce quite a bit of lag, so be wary of packing too many too close together (if you have that many materials available, you can probably do better).
**It’s important to note that although the wiki’s will state they provide 8192 EU/t per strike, that’s just how big one of its packets is. You have to drop that voltage using an HV transformer down to whatever else depending on what you u se. One lightning strike at 8192 EU/t might not seem like much, but it’s enough to fill up the rod’s internal buffer (25million EU, or 2 ½ MFSU’s worth).
If you have Mystcraft installed, set one up on a stormy world and use whatever method you desire to move the power to your base. One of the more creative ways I’ve seen involved filling energy crystals in a storm world, transferring them to the overworld via Railcraft to deposit the energy in whatever storage of your choosing, and taking the crystals back to be refilled (rinse and repeat)…You can use that same tactic for whatever other world you make through Mystcraft (wind power on storm, solar on always sunny).
Another way to use these is with Forestry’s rainmaker thing with iodine capsules to make rain, or taking advantage of irresponsible magic use and profiting off the local Flux your roommate created while trying to cosplay Hermoine Granger. If you need lightning bad enough, you can just throw a ton of junk into a crucible and smack it with your wand, or set up some magic energy absorbers to piss off the rest of the server! Be aware that anyone working with bee breeding, tree breeding, or solar power will probably hate you for using the weather to your advantage.

 

[Growle]

12. Dragon Egg Siphon: **WARNING** This thing is sort of bugged, I’m not 100% sure if it has been fixed. Basically, it will blow up as soon as the chunk it is in unloads. In addition, if there is one on a siphon and another one is cheated in and put on another siphon, more explosions. That being said, use at your own risk!!**
Anyway, besides the exploding, for all intents & purposes this thing is a glorified hybrid solar panel that runs at 128 eu/t day and night. Looks cool and is an awesome idea, but sort of risky and ultimately not worth the trouble until it’s bugs are fixed. If you plan on making one anyway, try using a chunkloader maybe, if that doesn’t work then let me know how big of a hole it left in your place cause I’m curious.

13. Magic Energy Converter: Using fuels that have magic in them you just feed them to this thing like you would coal to a generator. Different materials have different EU generation values, with the most coming from nether stars (about 1million EU total I believe). How do you make this sustainable? Well with either a lot of thaumic bees making shards, OR with an ender + blaze farm autocrafting ender eyes that feed into a rack of these converters. Too easy! If it explodes for whatever reason, you get a nice chunk of flux in the air.

14. Magic Energy Absorber: It’s too easy to say “WOW!! It runs off of AIR!!” WRONG!!! DEAD WRONG!!! This sneaky bastard will suck the vis out of the area, which will then suck the vis out of surrounding areas, so on and so forth until your house is literally a vis black hole. If you or your friends ever plan on doing magic and you absolutely INSIST on using these, at least be smart about it. You can feed it enchantments from weapons / tools / armor, and it will give you the item back. The only way I can think of making this sustainable is by using Minefactory machines to create a system that collects “mob essence” and autoenchants books, and then either autoenchants items, or leaves it to you. Honestly this thing is just more work than it’s worth, but I think it can absorb ender crystals which mean yet another ender farm usage. If this one blows up it also releases a nice flux bubble into your hole in the wall. Side benefit of flux is the storms that you can use the aforementioned lightning rod on, but resist the temptation!!!

15. Fusion Reactor: Ahh yes. We’ve all read about it, planned it and probably cheated it in, as getting this legit before your SMP map gets reset is always a hassle (I’m sure there are those that have done it, you get a double thumbs up of approval). Stupid amounts of power for a stupid amount of materials, and it just so happens you can automate the whole fuel use / creation / whatever. Definitely look into a guide before making this, it’s about as endgame as you can get. If you’re able to make one on your survival map, you should probably stop reading this guide right here, which is funny cause this is the last of it!


And that’s all I can think of for now, though I know I may be missing something. I’m going off of memory here, so if you can add anything at all, PLEASE DO!


**annoying note: Things like advanced solar panels are a double edged sword… They get a lot of flak due to their excessive ease of use, but not everyone wants to spend too much time on power systems. Usually, if people are given a choice between the easy or the hard way, most will choose the easy way (uncalled for fact of life!). The easy way here is falling into the trap of judging those that vocalize their desire for easier recipes, or even mocking them. Maybe they just wanted to vent, or maybe they became so used to building something that is now out of their reach. Not everyone reacts to change the same way… As things are now, by the time you have the materials for advanced solar panels, you will already have a solid energy foundation. My intent for this “guide” is to (hopefully) help those that aren’t fully aware of alternatives to advanced solars. My friends do ZERO research on FTB but build all sorts of ridiculous contraptions and always aim for solar. It’s usually up to me to tell them about alternative methods to everything, or changes in patch notes, or what something does. Regardless of whether it’s an honest desire to help, or if you just want to parade your knowledge to the adoration of the masses, I hope I helped!**

 

[Lambert2191]

steves carts tree farm + that forestry item that evades my memory = biomass

 

[Geometry]

steves carts tree farm + that forestry item that evades my memory = biomass

Fermenter?

 

[tehBlobLord]

Good guide, it was very detailed and surprisinglinteresting Keep up the good work

 

[Grydian2]

Ferminter is what you are thinking of. You can also use a tree farm a sawmill to run 2 36HP boilers. Easy to setup and automate just need a ton of steel.

 

[Saice]

good post there op. Keep it updated and this will be a nice go to thread for all them people asking "What power should I use"

 

[Geometry]

good post there op. Keep it updated and this will be a nice go to thread for all them people asking "What power should I use"

This could be added to the collected guides thread

 

[Growle]

Thanks! And thanks for reminding me Lambert, I forgot to add the section underneath it all mentioning the different types of farms you could make to fuel some of these.

 

[DoctorOr]

8. Nuclear Reactor + Radioactive Bees: Still not that many out there that have caught on to this, and you really don’t need fancy bee machines to make radioactive bees.

I was doing this in my last world (had all bee breeds, other than dyes) and most definitely, absolutely, Would Not Do Again.

Get back to me when IC2 has the planned update to nuclear. Maybe it will be worth the effort. Right now, nuclear is not material, space, or effort efficient.

**It’s important to note that although the wiki’s will state they provide 8192 EU/t per strike, that’s just how big one of its packets is. You have to drop that voltage using an HV transformer down to whatever else depending on what you u se. One lightning strike at 8192 EU/t might not seem like much, but it’s enough to fill up the rod’s internal buffer (25million EU, or 2 ½ MFSU’s worth).

Personal experience is more than enough EU from one strike to generate multiple stacks of UUmatter (at GregTech prices) and completely drain a matter fab of all ender eye dust "powering" it. In actual play, the largest problem is getting the amplifier (scrap, scrap boxes, ender eye dust, etc) to the matter fab fast enough. Oh, and fill up a MFSU to 75% at the same time.

But it costs 16 iridium and 20 chrome.

 

[Icarus White]

Er, right, just remembered.
Forestry is pushing through a new 'feature' in the newest version: biomass yield from saplings is now proportional to Sappiness, where non-Forestry saplings have lowest sappiness. Maximum sappiness is 150% of previous yield, but lowest is apparently substantially lower?

It's not really as large of a problem as it seems, though - you could rig up fertilizer production using GT, or simply use fertilizer - seriously, one vein of apatite just goes for ages.

 

[DoctorOr]

It's not really as large of a problem as it seems

It _seems_ like a non issue. I have 20k saplings and a full tank.

 

[YX33A]

Er, right, just remembered.
Forestry is pushing through a new 'feature' in the newest version: biomass yield from saplings is now proportional to Sappiness, where non-Forestry saplings have lowest sappiness. Maximum sappiness is 150% of previous yield, but lowest is apparently substantially lower?

It's not really as large of a problem as it seems, though - you could rig up fertilizer production using GT, or simply use fertilizer - seriously, one vein of apatite just goes for ages.

It _seems_ like a non issue. I have 20k saplings and a full tank.

It is basically a nerf with a clause which gives you a crap ton more biomass then normal if you spend honey. So yeah, a nerf. A rebalance in which the better output is basically impossible to achieve on industrial scale.
Unless you don't have to identify saplings you get off a tree which has been already been identified, in which case it's very possible. But I don't know, because I don't want extra types of wood and thus never touched Tree Breeding.

 

[EternalDensity]

There's a GregTech config setting which you can change to allow multiple dragon eggs without exploding. (Not that I've ever had a dragon egg myself)

 

[KirinDave]

Have you crunched actual numbers on the factorization output? Or were you just saying it exists?[DOUBLEPOST=1363822640][/DOUBLEPOST]

There's a GregTech config setting which you can change to allow multiple dragon eggs without exploding. (Not that I've ever had a dragon egg myself)

This option absolutely should be set in any pack with Xeno's Reliquary, since you can legitimately dupe the dragon's egg with XR.

 

[ryter78]

Love this guide!

 

[Vixation]

methane farm is what i'm working on, cost 25k eu and 250 secs for most recipes, with a net gain of 20k eu. through a gas turbine is slow though. but have a carrot/potato/nether wart farm and autoinput that and cells, punp it out and you're good to go. i currently have 3 centrifuges dedicated to carrot/taters/nether wart, and it's way more 1 turbine can handle, fully running it could probably power 3 turbines? not sure though.

 

[Maldroth]

Bees are another option to get certain items for fuel in some of the above instances. I use them for oil and lava to avoid draining the nether and create flowing liquid lag.

 

[DoctorOr]

Bees are another option to get certain items for fuel in some of the above instances. I use them for oil and lava to avoid draining the nether and create flowing liquid lag.

Oil has been pretty severly nerfed. Nothing that can't be resolved by using 10x as many bees, but still, nerfed.