Suggestions to improve this power setup? Trying to automate power.

[zorn]

My idea was a vertical tower of engines pumping into a stack of MFSUs surrounded by some sort of lamp that lit up when the MFSUs were full AND to have the MFSU's turn on the engines and a generator backup as they drained out.

Overview shot of the setup:

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Basic shot of the engines and the stack of lights/mfsu's.

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This is the fuel and water tank with RP2 redstone cables. There are two Liquid Detectors in the xycraft tank, one at half height, one at about the top. each is connected with RP2 redstone cables to the Liquiducts at the bottom of the fuel tank. So basically when the water tank is half full, it turns on the fuel to one bank of combustion engines, when it fills up, it turns on fuel to the other bank of combustion engines. If i run out of water somehow, it will cut the fuel to the engines and the idea is that they would run out of fuel before the water runs out.

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Id have the level detectors just shut the engines right off, but i have the MFSUs hooked up to the engines directly, like this generator backup.

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The MFSUs are all set to emit a redstone signal when empty. The second to the bottom MFSU is connected by RP2 redstone cable to a mv transformer. The MFSU runs out of energy, triggers transformer, which then allows poewr to go to the ME network, which immediately puts charcoal into all the generators. MFSU fills up, everything shuts off.

The combustion engines are triggered by MFSU's higher up in the line. As the MFSUs fill up, the lights turn on givin me a big visual indicator of the power i have, and shut off backup generators, then one bank of combustion engines and then the second bank as the whole stack gets full of energy.

This is why the level detectors in the water tank shut off the fuel, i dont see a way to have the MFSUs triggering the combustion engines, but then have the water tank override that and shut them off.

I also cannot find any way to use redstone wire of any type to connect each MFSU to the lights, i have to put the lights right next to the MFSUs. If I try to run insulated redstone wire or whatever, they have to connect to each other. I initially wanted the stack of lights to all be next to each other in a line, not wrapped around the MFSUs. Id have liked to have put lights in a box around the MFSUs, but the lights not directly touching the MFSUs wont fire up, and there appears to be no compact way to use redstone wiring to make them light up.

Anyway in the past I always just used energy sources that were 'auto shut off' or would just cause no issue if the battery system filled up (solar panels, etc.) so im new on trying to automate stuff like this, anyone have any suggestions on how to make this cleaner or more efficient?

And one issue ive run into is having a small trickle of energy coming out of the system, like my ME network, it drains the batteries just a bit which triggers the engines... but they then shut off in a few seconds as the battery fills up again. Rinse and repeat. not sure how to fix that issue.

 

[Benjywa]

My set up

Engines to bridge to MFSU's
But if you set the MFSU's up in a chain the (series not parallel) and have the back one (first one from the bridge) set to send a signal when empty then when you have used 10M power it will turn the whole system on and all the other ones will still be full to keep you going

I think thats what you were asking for

 

[Omicron]

And one issue ive run into is having a small trickle of energy coming out of the system, like my ME network, it drains the batteries just a bit which triggers the engines... but they then shut off in a few seconds as the battery fills up again. Rinse and repeat. not sure how to fix that issue.

Fixing it would require a setup with a kind of latch. Basically engines only turn on if the topmost MFSU is empty (which can be logically equal to the second topmost one starting to be not full), and then only turn off when the topmost MFSU is full. How exactly you need to implement that depends on your specific setup and the room you have available.

Overally I like your big power indicator lamps. One issue I can see though is if your system ever needs more than 512 EU/t. You have a large amount of storage and a big engine rack, but having only one MFSU output directly to the network means that you're limited to at most 512 EU/t at once. Turn on your mass fab, for instance, and it will consume that much on its own already. In case you run GregTech, it gets worse because there are a lot of advanced machines (industrial grinder etc.) that require 128 EU/t by themselves. That's the reason why I, when I built my last IC2/GregTech factory, abstained from this kind of serial MFSU chain. I chose a parallel storage system, with 4 MFSUs outputting towards the machines at once. In the end, the power draw of my factory was over 1200 EU/t if everything was on at once, so even two wouldn't have been enough (and that was counted without the matter fab!).

 

[zorn]

The charcoal works ok. If you have the power line going to the MFSU above the unit that is kicking the system on, then the charcoal that is in all the generators 'overfills' the system or fills it far beyond where the MFSU is that kicks the generators on. So then the slow trickle causes no issues.

Combustion engines start and stop automatically though, so they still kick on and off.

i debated on the MFSUs and I know the parallel setup is more ideal but you also get energy draining from all the MFSUs at once, so that killed my idea of lights and stuff. What I had thought was to put a few MFSUs underneath the floor near the gregtech stuff, as ore processing for me is never a 24/7 thing, and have those 3-5 MFSUs set up in parallel, going to the gregtech stuff. kind of bypasses the original idea, but this whole thing was more about fun than function really.

Basically engines only turn on if the topmost MFSU is empty (which can be logically equal to the second topmost one starting to be not full), and then only turn off when the topmost MFSU is full. How exactly you need to implement that depends on your specific setup and the room you have available.

I dont see how to implement this, which is kind of why i posted here, to get ideas.[DOUBLEPOST=1377016071][/DOUBLEPOST]

My set up

Engines to bridge to MFSU's
But if you set the MFSU's up in a chain the (series not parallel) and have the back one (first one from the bridge) set to send a signal when empty then when you have used 10M power it will turn the whole system on and all the other ones will still be full to keep you going

I think thats what you were asking for

yeah this is how i ahve it set up now, but the issue is that the combustion engines cycle on andoff repeatedly if you have a slow energy drain on the system, and the only failsafe i have for the engines running out of water is to cut the fuel... not shut off the engines.

 

[Omicron]

You could try something like: Topmost MFSU leading into a RS latch. Second topmost MFSU leading into a NOT gate leading into the other input of the RS latch. Engines hooked up to the latch output.

Effect: Engines are off. Topmost MFSU empties. Second topmost MFSU ceases being full, thus turns off its redstone signal. The NOT gate turns that into an active signal, triggering the latch. The engines now start running. The second topmost MFSU becomes full again, turns on its redstone signal, which turns off the NOT gate. Engines keep running because the latch still hasn't toggled back. Finally, the topmost MFSU becomes full, and starts outputting a redstone signal. This triggers the latch, the engines switch off again. Rinse, repeat.

 

[MigukNamja]

One thing to consider is keeping the serial MFSU setup, running 512EU/t over nearly lossless glass fibre cable close to your machines and then feeding that into 8 parallel MFSUs. Their outputs would then feed the input to an HV Transformer to *up* transform into 2048EU/t power. The 2048EU/t power would go into your machines. This will require all IC2 machines to have transformer upgrades. When I did this, my IC2 machines could run at their maximum rate (1 operation per tick) and sustain that rate nearly indefinitely, well, at least until the 8 MFSUs ran out of power, but that's 80M EU we're talking about it. That's a *lot* of operations, even for maximum overclocked machines.

And, as everyone else has pointed out, building in some hystersis by waiting until at least 1 of the serial MFSUs is completely drained is not a bad idea. It prevent rapid on/off cycles. Heck, you don't even have to 8 in serial to do that. You just need 2 in serial.

So, another alternative is to re-arrange from 8 in serial to 4 parallel sets of serial pairs. You would then connect RedNet cable to the 4 input MFSUs and OR their "emit Redstone signal when empty". That way, your engines would turn on when any 1 of the 4 input MFSUs was completely empty, giving you between 10M and 40M EU of buffering/hysteresis between engine on/off cycles. I believe MFSUs in parallel will empty equally, but I could be wrong.