Thermal Expansion Energy Production.

[Regus]

Hello there!

I was wondering if there was a early game power source that was stable as well as less manual then the coal Dynamos that I use right now.


http://imgur.com/a/FISgR - Current energy setup.

 

[Gamefury64]

EU Furnace generators. A basic Fuel -> Power set up. Cheap and efficient. Also notable is the EnderIO stirling generator, which can be upgraded as power needs go up.

 

[Regus]

Thanks! I will look into those in Creative

 

[Inaeo]

Prior to actual automation, the easiest is likely: tree farm -> charcoal -> XU survivalist generators. You have a ton of options to generate RF, but the extended burn time in the survivalist generators makes them a go to for charging my machines while I do other things. Their output is low, so if you have higher demands, a XU furnace generator or TE steam dynamo (paired with an Aqueous Accumulator) may work better. The dynamo can be augmented, and later you can feed it steam from other sources rather than fueling it traditionally.

Once things get a bit more automated, that charcoal can power MFR Steam Boilers for 400mb/t of steam each, which can produce RF via steam dynamos (or if you rush it, a small BR turbine). It only takes five MFR boilers to fuel a max sized BR turbine, so this system is something to start out with that can grow along with your power needs.

Later, you can convert the system to run forever on its own without input (using lava buckets to fuel the boilers).

 

[Tepig4321]

Furnace gens?
The make an automated tree farm to make charcoal

 

[D4rkWulf]

I think the best early game RF gen by thermal expansion is Reactant Dynamo with Sugar + Sewage. Very easy to automate and can produce a nice amount of RF.
Though normally I got MFR harvester + planter setup for tree farm. 2 Redstone Furnace's and 8x Furnace Generator from XU. Self sufficient with a lot of spare energy and resources.

 

[Gamefury64]

Magical crops redstone plant -> Magma crucible -> Heated redstone generator

 

[Regus]

Thank you to everyone who replied!

I think I will start building a automated tree farm for the charcoal engines!

 

[Inaeo]

Magical crops redstone plant -> Magma crucible -> Heated redstone generator

I did this as the backbone of my last Monster world. I managed to produce over 100Krf/t off a single 5x5 farm. So many things in that pack could speed up crop growth it was gross.

 

[KingTriaxx]

I'm partial to steam engine run on charcoal, then transfer the charcoal to a steam boiler.

 

[Baron_Falcon]

Hello there!

I was wondering if there was a early game power source that was stable as well as less manual then the coal Dynamos that I use right now.


http://imgur.com/a/FISgR - Current energy setup.

Yes, there is a much easier and practical early game power. A single core reactor is cheap, uses very little fuel, and will put out more than those 3 dynamos. It will run a long time on a few bars of yellorium. 3x3x3. I start with survival gens placed direct to the machine for initial ore doubling, then move to a reactor as soon as i have enough resources. I haven't used dynamos in a long time. The last time i used them was for early power when there was a bug preventing the survivalist gen from direct connecting to machines.

 

[Baron_Falcon]

Edit: My previous post was in fact referring to the Big Reactors mod. Should have clarified that.

 

[Baron_Falcon]

Also, couple tips, sometimes for whatever reason yellorite will process as uranium. Two ways to deal with are, put uranium ingot in barrel that contains yellowium ingot, it will turn into yellorium. Or reprocess in pulverizer/redstone furnace. Another trick to feed reactor is connect cyanite reprocessor to output then feed back into the reactor. That will cut fuel usage considerably.

 

[Photoloss]

A few tips on solid fuel setups:

• Use EnderIO Stirlings instead of ExtraUtils Survivalist Generators, they cost less for a higher power density even before upgrades, and coal is plentiful for reserve fuel.
  
• Vanilla hoppers can fill a few generators early on while you go on mining trips. Basic servos are also cheap, and easily suffice for a few Stirlings.
• Storage+fuel efficiency can get you further than high RF/t, in the early game you won't really have machines running constantly.
• If available, a TE Sawmill processing wood into 6 planks is more efficient than charcoal (which you also get from the sawdust). Like other TE machines you can upgrade it later to keep up with rising fuel demands.
• MFR treefarms are your OP friend. Remember to void the sludge as a full tank will slow down the machine, later you can boil it for renewable Clay and Nether materials (still needs a trash can)
• You can go all the way up to reactor-level power with mass Stirlings, but it's very tedious to set up
• BigReactors turbines can run on steam from non-reactor sources
• Your treefarm can also fuel Endoflames and Munchdews from Botania, and can provide either food (apples) or MFR rubber.

Or you can just go the lazy route and set up a fluid pump+chunkloader in the Nether, using a portable tank or Ender Tank to transfer the lava, and run a lava-fueled generator of your choice. Depending on the modpack you might want to first enter the Nether with nothing but cobble, torches and expendable gear since some of the modded mobs can be rather nasty.

 

[Baron_Falcon]

A few tips on solid fuel setups:

• Use EnderIO Stirlings instead of ExtraUtils Survivalist Generators, they cost less for a higher power density even before upgrades, and coal is plentiful for reserve fuel.
  
• Vanilla hoppers can fill a few generators early on while you go on mining trips. Basic servos are also cheap, and easily suffice for a few Stirlings.
• Storage+fuel efficiency can get you further than high RF/t, in the early game you won't really have machines running constantly.
• If available, a TE Sawmill processing wood into 6 planks is more efficient than charcoal (which you also get from the sawdust). Like other TE machines you can upgrade it later to keep up with rising fuel demands.
• MFR treefarms are your OP friend. Remember to void the sludge as a full tank will slow down the machine, later you can boil it for renewable Clay and Nether materials (still needs a trash can)
• You can go all the way up to reactor-level power with mass Stirlings, but it's very tedious to set up
• BigReactors turbines can run on steam from non-reactor sources
• Your treefarm can also fuel Endoflames and Munchdews from Botania, and can provide either food (apples) or MFR rubber.

Or you can just go the lazy route and set up a fluid pump+chunkloader in the Nether, using a portable tank or Ender Tank to transfer the lava, and run a lava-fueled generator of your choice. Depending on the modpack you might want to first enter the Nether with nothing but cobble, torches and expendable gear since some of the modded mobs can be rather nasty.

Good call on the ender IO sterling, that one had escaped me. 20 rf/t is definitely a step up and I tested direct connect to a machine, gtg. Also, once buffer is full it stops burning fuel. Me likey a lot.

Vanilla hoppers definitely make a good early game way to feed things, also to feed machines. However now that thermal ducts are back I prob wont use those anymore.

 

[D4rkWulf]

• Use EnderIO Stirlings instead of ExtraUtils Survivalist Generators, they cost less for a higher power density even before upgrades, and coal is plentiful for reserve fuel.

EnderIO Stirling Generator produces 20Rf/t with 2x fuel consume rate
While Survivalist Generators only produce 5Rf/t and in long term are more efficient (80k Rf per coal)
The Furnace Generator from XU produces 40Rf/t, but a lot less efficient than the survivalist (20k Rf per coal)

All three need redstone so you already need at least an iron pickaxe to build any of them, but the Stirling Generator and Survivalist Generartor are mostly build out of stone, so resource wise it's a lot cheaper. However a Furnace Generator only costs 14 iron ingots which you should already posses at this point.

The first things you normally want to hook up to a power system is an ore processing system. If we're still going with Ender IO, you'll need both a sag mill and alloy smelter. Both machines require 20Rf/t, so a single stirling engine without upgrades does not produce enough power to power both. Upgrading it with a Double-Layer Capacitor bumps it up to 40Rf/t but u already need an Alloy Smelter and Sag mill to make it.
So either you build to stirling engines to power the machines and both feed them fuel, or you build 8 Survivalist Generators, who'll build a ton of RF in your absence, or you make a single Furnace Generator and just feed it whenever you need the machines.

Also remember that the XU generators are better upgradable than Ender IO
- Stirling Generator + Octadic Capacitor = 80Rf/t
- Survivalist Generator(8x) = 40 Rf/t
- Survivalist Generator(64x) = 320 Rf/t
- Furnace Generator(8x) = 320 Rf/t
- Furnace Generator(64x) = 2560 Rf/t

For those who do not know Extra Utilities (XU); Survivalist Generator(8x) does not mean you need to have 8 generators (you do for the recipe) but the 8x recipe compacts the generator so it'll still only take 1 block of space.

 

[Baron_Falcon]

While the XU (I like your abbreviation) is more efficient, I think the ability to get 20rf/t from the single IO vs the 5rf/t from XU is worth the trade-off when you look at crafting cost, time and logistics of four machines vs one, particularly since I wont be using them for very long. My early game ore automation is pretty much locked in with a pulverizer being first machine, outputting to vanilla furnace then redstone. I would normally end up making 4 of the XU's before moving to a small reactor. One IO will do the same amount of work for a pretty small cost, crafting once, and only needing to feed one inexpensive generator that I can upgrade. I'll have to check but I think to get the 20rf/t from 4 XU's, the fuel efficiency might actually be equal or better for the single IO.

In any event, my first priority once I have automated ore doubling is a small 1-3 core reactor which is pretty cheap and easy. I cant recall exactly but a single core passive reactor puts out over 200 rf/t. Once I have that I'm good on power till I get a quarry. Then I'll either build a small reactor at the quarry sight, or upgrade the base reactor and put quarry down a level below it.

Using that power strategy and a passive reactor putting out 2K rf/t, I can get pretty far pretty fast in the game before I need to start thinking about turbines. I'm at that stage in current game and I'm powering two ender quarries, several ore processing setups and a basic one channel AE. The only time I've had power issues was when charging 3 draconic blocks at the same time.

I used to do the giant lava and steam dynamo setups and MFR tree farms, pumps in the nether etc etc, but Big Reactors has pretty much made those setups obsolete for me. So much less needy and I can focus on getting to The End.

 

[Photoloss]

Survivalist Generators are more efficient than unupgraded Stirlings, yes. However the cost of building several of them can be prohibitive in the early game, costing 3x the iron and redstone for 1/4 the power output. Coal (to offset the loss in efficiency) is plentiful and in low demand compared to iron and redstone, which are used in pretty much any mod machine.
Survivalist x64's are prohibitively expensive compared to 4 Octadic-Stirlings, and are in fact less fuel-efficient! (only with the Octadic upgrade though) At the point where you could afford a Q.E.D. the additional pipes to fill Stirlings are essentially free, x64's are only better if you have major space restrictions. But in that case you don't use burner power.

The advantage over BigReactors is that you can keep upgrading and adding to your initial setup for a long time, meaning you don't have to redesign your power room every time you need a bigger reactor, but that's mainly down to personal preference. Also EnderChests full of wood are cheaper than Tesseracts or pipes/cables for small isolated consumers not worthy of a seperate reactor.

 

[Baron_Falcon]

Generators have an advantage over Big Reactors? :O

There is no way you are going to compete with Big Reactors for sheer power with generators. I can fit a passive un-cooled reactor in a 9x9x9 space with access to sides and top that will put out over 2K rf/t and it's pretty cheap to build. Not a big deal to plan for at all when building or mining out a room for it. I don't even bother with liquid redstone etc anymore because I know I'm eventually going active, I don't care about the efficiency at that point because I have all the fuel I can possibly use. And once you go active, even the lowest powered electrum coiled turbine puts out over 12k rf/t, I think more like 14k. And you are going to need an entire building or large space for that. I usually end up building a power plant in one of my quarry pits if I can get the water out easy because I'm going to have at least 4 turbines putting out 24k rf/t so it's the perfect place to build a platform for the turbines and reactor(s) and hang laser drills off of since it's already to bedrock. The last setup I built had 8 24k rf/t enderium coiled turbines. Yes, I needed it. Filling a Draconic energy sphere with 1.2 trillion rf and powering 4 laser drills along with a stupidly massive ore processing system is no easy task .

 

[D4rkWulf]

I know that the x8 en x64 cost a bit more, but I was talking about when we'd start upgrading them. The mere fact that they both can produce more Rf/t in the end.
And you're forgetting to mention the furnace generator. I haven't found the total Rf a stirling engine can produce on a single piece of coal, but the XU furnace generator can produce up to 20k Rf and the recipe is relatively cheap. It's mostly iron, but by the time you're starting to mine redstone you'd normally have a fair bit of iron, so 14 pieces is not that much for easy power access.

Whether you decide to continue with BigReactors or upgrade whatever you have, is a worry for later. Mid game and Late game power production can always become good discussion in terms of what's "best", but this thread is about early game power production.
Though I admit... BigReactors pretty nice