What does YOUR Power Room look like?

[gusmahler]

Isn't it 200? Have to admit I'm not the biggest fan of Power converters, it's just too cheap compared to the other alternatives and feels kinda ...cheaty, I guess, but that's just my opinion.

Using turbines, you can use three of them at 75% capacity, giving a total of 225 EU/t. If the extra 25 EU/t isn't important to you, you can save a bunch of steel by just connecting two turbines at 100% capacity, giving 200 EU/t total.[DOUBLEPOST=1372195164][/DOUBLEPOST]

Still better than pumping infinite lava from Nether or spawning infinite enemies that get automatically killed for resources as many people post here.

Nether lava is not infinite. I drained 4 lava lakes in the nether. The flowing lava allegedly became the cause of a lot of lag on the old server I was on.

 

[Dragonsama]

So after seeing what everyone does with steam on here I decided to try and build a system of my own. I went with 6 36 HP boilers being run on Bio fuel. In all my tests so far using a liquid teseract to transport then steam consumer, energy bridge, and HV producer each boiler is setting out a fairly constant 512 EU. In all documentation it seems like it should be less but those are the numbers I keep getting.


I use a quantum tank to hold all the bio fuel the iron tank is merely aesthetics.

To supply the sapling needs I have a three tier tree farm that is pretty good at keeping up with demand. It does dwindle from time to time though so I plan to build a second 3 tier tree farm in the near future.

With the steam being converted to EU I am now ruing my Matter Fab off of steam.

My other power source is still Solar and while I connect this steam system into the main grid when needed the solar panels do a good job keeping my AESU and multiple MFSU fully charged.

I do step all power down to LV and just step it back up when needed.

I hope my second post is a little better, I had not noticed how much people despised using lava systems. I am still going to use mine because it is an excellent source of MJ, this just inspired me to try something new.

 

[Redweevil]

This is something I've been working on in the beta pack. Sadly after logging out its decided to break but the basic principles are set up here.

The basic principle was having a force tree grow then be mined out by a mining well. A MFR block breaker would then be depowered by redstone and break the mining well and pipe it back to a turtle ready to be replaced. The piece of dirt that the sapling would be planted on is moved before the mining well activates, meaning it remains to be replanted on. The saplings would be sent to the bottom turtle, while the logs would go to squeezers which would feed Force Engines and power the whole system. For some reason the sapling is now refusing to grow and before that glitched out I had to work on the turtle sending stuff out as well as creating a BUD switch so that the system would activate as soon as the tree grew. I also needed to check that the engines would produce enough MJ to keep the system self sufficient, though by adding milk it seemed as though it would.

 

[gusmahler]

So after seeing what everyone does with steam on here I decided to try and build a system of my own. I went with 6 36 HP boilers being run on Bio fuel. In all my tests so far using a liquid teseract to transport then steam consumer, energy bridge, and HV producer each boiler is setting out a fairly constant 512 EU. In all documentation it seems like it should be less but those are the numbers I keep getting.

A single 36 HP boiler can only produce a total 350 EU/tick. Since it is an HV producer, it's creating packets of 512 EU, but at a rate of 350 EU/t. You won't notice the difference unless you attempted to use 512 EU/t (e.g., fill up 4 industrial blast furnaces at once). Then, you'd notice that you're not producing enough power. Though if you had an MFSU to buffer it, you wouldn't notice as quick.

I do wonder why you put all your power at LV, and step up as necessary. I'd thought that, to keep power losses at a minimum, you do the opposite and keep everything HV, stepping down as necessary. At least, that's what I do:

4 steam consumers and 3 liquid tesseracts (one of each not visible here) that connect to 5 36 HP boilers. The matter fab is directly connected to an EV producer, as is an HV transformer, to transmit a 512 EU line to my 128 EU/t machines (industrial grinders and blast furnaces)

 

[budge]

Using turbines, you can use three of them at 75% capacity, giving a total of 225 EU/t. If the extra 25 EU/t isn't important to you, you can save a bunch of steel by just connecting two turbines at 100% capacity, giving 200 EU/t total.[DOUBLEPOST=1372195164][/DOUBLEPOST]

The Railcraft change log mentions that turbine output has been increased to 200 eu/tick. I have yet to learn if it also consumes more steam as a result. Does anyone know?

 

[gusmahler]

The Railcraft change log mentions that turbine output has been increased to 200 eu/tick. I have yet to learn if it also consumes more steam as a result. Does anyone know?

Ah, I forgot about the change. I hadn't used turbines in a while. I don't even know if the change affects version 1.4.7 or not.

But to answer your question, it does not consume more steam. The old turbines were 100 EU/t for 320 mB/tick of steam. The new turbines are 200 EU/t for 320 mB/tick of steam. So turbines now actually provide more (significantly more) output than power converters does. (450 EU/t vs 350 EU/t, if you use 3 turbines). But the cost is still so much more than power converters. And it requires new turbines every 3.5 days.

 

[Dragonsama]

A single 36 HP boiler can only produce a total 350 EU/tick. Since it is an HV producer, it's creating packets of 512 EU, but at a rate of 350 EU/t. You won't notice the difference unless you attempted to use 512 EU/t (e.g., fill up 4 industrial blast furnaces at once). Then, you'd notice that you're not producing enough power. Though if you had an MFSU to buffer it, you wouldn't notice as quick.

I do wonder why you put all your power at LV, and step up as necessary. I'd thought that, to keep power losses at a minimum, you do the opposite and keep everything HV, stepping down as necessary. At least, that's what I do:

4 steam consumers and 3 liquid tesseracts (one of each not visible here) that connect to 5 36 HP boilers. The matter fab is directly connected to an EV producer, as is an HV transformer, to transmit a 512 EU line to my 128 EU/t machines (industrial grinders and blast furnaces)

I am still new to the entire steam usage idea and learning as I go so I will have to do some more research on that topic. The reason I step down though is about 90% of all machines I have are LV machines like centerfuge, Recycler, and electric furnace. The way I step down though is 100% lossless, 1 MFSU goes into 1 MV transformer then into 4 MFE into 16 LV transformer into 32 Batboxes. esentially That mfsu send out at 512 EU then the 4 MFE attached to a MV transfomer breaks that 512 into 4 128 EU packets, so on and so on. At the end it sends out 32 packets of 32 EU witch is still 512 EU just accepted by all LV Machines. So Its really easy to step back up just throw a mfsu on the line and break it down to 4 MFE. Thats what I have always done. IF Im wrong in this let me know but the math seems to be correct.

 

[gusmahler]

I am still new to the entire steam usage idea and learning as I go so I will have to do some more research on that topic. The reason I step down though is about 90% of all machines I have are LV machines like centerfuge, Recycler, and electric furnace. The way I step down though is 100% lossless, 1 MFSU goes into 1 MV transformer then into 4 MFE into 16 LV transformer into 32 Batboxes. esentially That mfsu send out at 512 EU then the 4 MFE attached to a MV transfomer breaks that 512 into 4 128 EU packets, so on and so on. At the end it sends out 32 packets of 32 EU witch is still 512 EU just accepted by all LV Machines. So Its really easy to step back up just throw a mfsu on the line and break it down to 4 MFE. Thats what I have always done. IF Im wrong in this let me know but the math seems to be correct.

I guess I was just thinking about real life, where power companies transmit power at really high voltages to minimize losses, then step them down to 120 for the homes.

The wiki for fibre cable merely says that it loses 1 EU every 40 blocks, nothing about packet size. So I guess a 32 EU packets loses the same amount of EU as 512 EU packets. I guess it makes wiring easier also, since more machines are on 32 EU packets than 128 EU packets.

 

[Airship]

Ah, I forgot about the change. I hadn't used turbines in a while. I don't even know if the change affects version 1.4.7 or not.

But to answer your question, it does not consume more steam. The old turbines were 100 EU/t for 320 mB/tick of steam. The new turbines are 200 EU/t for 320 mB/tick of steam. So turbines now actually provide more (significantly more) output than power converters does. (450 EU/t vs 350 EU/t, if you use 3 turbines). But the cost is still so much more than power converters. And it requires new turbines every 3.5 days.

I still don't quite understand why you want to use three turbines per boiler... Are there any particular boons of doing this, other than a paltry boost of MJ? Seems to me you'd gain a lot more efficiency just setting up another boiler for EU production and have two boilers with four turbines producing 800MJ/t at 100%...

 

[Saice]

You know....I wonder if you can get a better return off a HP boiler to RC Trubines... or since AtomicSci turbines work with steam via luiciducts whould you get a better return using them on a HP boiler set up.

 

[qap]

This is more of a concept for the power room in 1.6, so I didn't do the pretty works at all. Additionally, it's only half finished, not much motivation to build much more due to a map change being near.
The 144 HP steam boilers and the RP machinery reside in a 9x9 chunks wide chunk loaded area far away from my base, as the rp tubes'n'stuff bring my framerate down alot.
Steam is then transferred with liquiducts, feeding these little power towers. Which will be hanging from the ceiling of my workshop.
Capacity will be 50kEU/t.

 

[Neirin]

I am still new to the entire steam usage idea and learning as I go so I will have to do some more research on that topic. The reason I step down though is about 90% of all machines I have are LV machines like centerfuge, Recycler, and electric furnace. The way I step down though is 100% lossless, 1 MFSU goes into 1 MV transformer then into 4 MFE into 16 LV transformer into 32 Batboxes. esentially That mfsu send out at 512 EU then the 4 MFE attached to a MV transfomer breaks that 512 into 4 128 EU packets, so on and so on. At the end it sends out 32 packets of 32 EU witch is still 512 EU just accepted by all LV Machines. So Its really easy to step back up just throw a mfsu on the line and break it down to 4 MFE. Thats what I have always done. IF Im wrong in this let me know but the math seems to be correct.

That process is lossless as long as you don't incur distance-based EU loss. Of course, if you avoid distance-based EU loss every EU power net system is lossless, so... If you incur any cable loss LV suffers 16 times more EU loss than HV (1 EU out of every 32 vs 1 EU out of every 512).

 

[Airship]

loss should really never be an issue. Even when stretching cable a long way (Say you have a central powerplant and want to feed all your satelite bases) you can still do this no problem without any powerloss whatsoever. Just use glass fiber cable, and then every 40th block, exchange one cable for a transformer relevant to the size of your packets. If you're sending; LV for 32, MV for 128 and HV for 512. The only drawback is you can't send more than 512 due to the limitations of glass fiber cable.

Sorta like this (obviously with more cable inbetween each transformer, this was set up as a test): Linky

 

[darkslayr425]

this is on my friend server, and details roughly all of the steps in my power system.
although not great in comparison to others, it is one of my fav builds, just set up 5th HP boiler.

 

[Crindigo]

Ah, I forgot about the change. I hadn't used turbines in a while. I don't even know if the change affects version 1.4.7 or not.

But to answer your question, it does not consume more steam. The old turbines were 100 EU/t for 320 mB/tick of steam. The new turbines are 200 EU/t for 320 mB/tick of steam. So turbines now actually provide more (significantly more) output than power converters does. (450 EU/t vs 350 EU/t, if you use 3 turbines). But the cost is still so much more than power converters. And it requires new turbines every 3.5 days.

Technically you can use the rotor repair recipe (rotor with 1-8 blades in a crafting table), where each blade removes 2500 damage from the rotor. If you repaired right before it broke, it would cost 12 blades, or 36 steel. Still a maintenance cost, of course, but not as bad as a brand new 99-steel rotor.

Edit: Also, turbines don't output more than they need to (so if your MFSUs are all full, it stops), and when running at under 100% they damage the rotor proportionally slower. Pretty viable EU generation IMO, I plan on continuing to use them.

 

[RedBoss]

You know....I wonder if you can get a better return off a HP boiler to RC Trubines... or since AtomicSci turbines work with steam via luiciducts whould you get a better return using them on a HP boiler set up.

I'll be testing that soon. Seemed interesting

 

[Saice]

I'll be testing that soon. Seemed interesting

I would love to know the out come on that.

 

[gusmahler]

I still don't quite understand why you want to use three turbines per boiler... Are there any particular boons of doing this, other than a paltry boost of MJ? Seems to me you'd gain a lot more efficiency just setting up another boiler for EU production and have two boilers with four turbines producing 800MJ/t at 100%...

Well, two reasons. One is the "paltry" boost of EU (Admittedly going from 200 to 225 isn't a huge deal, and probably not worth the huge cost of steel). Two is that turbines last slightly longer going at 75% than going 100%. Once I had some ultimate hybrid solar cells going, I ended up turning off the third turbine for each of my boilers, though. Then ended up turning them all off completely once I had enough solar.

 

[Siro]

loss should really never be an issue. Even when stretching cable a long way (Say you have a central powerplant and want to feed all your satelite bases) you can still do this no problem without any powerloss whatsoever. Just use glass fiber cable, and then every 40th block, exchange one cable for a transformer relevant to the size of your packets. If you're sending; LV for 32, MV for 128 and HV for 512. The only drawback is you can't send more than 512 due to the limitations of glass fiber cable.

Sorta like this (obviously with more cable inbetween each transformer, this was set up as a test): Linky

You can send more than 512/t, you just need more transformers in parallel to push through more packets simultaneously. Also you only need to use mv transformers because they can take in as large packets as glass cable can carry and emit up to 512/t worth of MV packets per transformer per tick. The only real drawback is that one will lose a block of straight line distance for each transformer beyond the first, but this is cheaper than trying to have completely separate lengths of glass fiber per 512 and obviously cheaper than superconducting wire.

One can also use MFSUs instead of mv transformers to incorporate storage capacity along the transmission network.

 

[RedBoss]

I would love to know the out come on that.

I posted picks on the RR G+ Page, but I got 32 turbines up to full speed and made 1600EU/t. The boiler wasn't at mac temp and I could probably continue adding turbines.