Whats the best way to produce power with coal?

[paperlord]

There's 2 easy methods that I know of.
1. Cheap: Run some RP tubes at the bottom of the generators. The coal will automatically be put in those generators which need more fuel. If you have too much coal, you can put an overflow barrel after a restriction tube.
2. A bit more expensive: Use a router, this is the way to go, imo. You can make it super compact and make a block of say 5x5x5 generators and make the router fill all of them, by setting the router to fill at the bottom. Use some upgrades to make it faster.

There are other methods, but these are the methods I use or will be using.

Edit: ninja'd by 4 people :/

 

[WayofTime]

There's 2 easy methods that I know of.
1. Cheap: Run some RP tubes at the bottom of the generators. The coal will automatically be put in those generators which need more fuel. If you have too much coal, you can put an overflow barrel after a restriction tube.
2. A bit more expensive: Use a router, this is the way to go, imo. You can make it super compact and make a block of say 5x5x5 generators and make the router fill all of them, by setting the router to fill at the bottom. Use some upgrades to make it faster.

There are other methods, but these are the methods I use or will be using.

Edit: ninja'd by 4 people :/

If you do do this, you have to obviously make sure that energy can get OUT of the generators. Generators themselves do not share energy (only factorization and Redpower, if I remember correctly, can share energy directly). This will cause SOME limitations with your design, but shouldn't cause too many issues if you wire it correctly. You can set the router up with a filter upgrade and connect the generators together via using some buffers (they act as an inventory) and, by using the correct configuration on your router with the upgrade, you can cause the system to only output coal into the generators.

It may take some thinking to get working, but overall it is relatively simple (compared to fully automatic nuclear reactors).

That previous statement just gave me a brain wave!

 

[AlanEsh]

Yeah Router would be great, but not really an option this early in the game for me (new server).

Now that Generators stop burning fuel when they're not outputting energy, I don't really see Tubes as a good solution. Won't that make the timing of the Filter impossible unless gates are used?

 

[Lambert2191]

Yeah Router would be great, but not really an option this early in the game for me (new server).

Now that Generators stop burning fuel when they're not outputting energy, I don't really see Tubes as a good solution. Won't that make the timing of the Filter impossible unless gates are used?

the coal will just stay in the generator until it's needed, and each generator will continuously have a full inventory of coal. I don't see where you are finding an issue tbh.

 

[crazy_fab]

Pipe would actually cause problem as you would need a gate on each generator to make sure it's not full before sending coal. Whereas with pipe if there is no place (ie generator full) nothing will get sent.

 

[Zjarek_S]

You don't need gates, if you send exactly the amount of coal that will be used (redstone energy cell and very slow timer + state cell is your friend). It may seem to be a problem, when generators are not working all the time. However in this case you can enable supply system only when generators are in enabled cycle. Remember that if you use less power than a generator will provide, additional will be wasted, so you should already have them on splitter cable and RS latch with some energy storage, you can just get signal from this latch to fuel providing system.

 

[paperlord]

Thank you for correcting me WayofTime, didn't really think it all through. But even with cables through, it's still a very compact solution.

 

[AlanEsh]

the coal will just stay in the generator until it's needed, and each generator will continuously have a full inventory of coal. I don't see where you are finding an issue tbh.

I set up a test this morning and had stacks of coal flying all over the tubes... but I had just woken up and likely did something very wrong

Honestly, my only significant use of Tubes supplying fuel was to feed a sawmill, a generator, and a pair of solid fuel boilers. But for all that I used gates and redstone tubes rather than timers and basic tubes, so I'm a bit rusty on plain jane Tubes+Filters I guess. I'll futz with it more tonight.

 

[WayofTime]

I set up a test this morning and had stacks of coal flying all over the tubes... but I had just woken up and likely did something very wrong

Honestly, my only significant use of Tubes supplying fuel was to feed a sawmill, a generator, and a pair of solid fuel boilers. But for all that I used gates and redstone tubes rather than timers and basic tubes, so I'm a bit rusty on plain jane Tubes+Filters I guess. I'll futz with it more tonight.

You don't even need filters, really. Just have the tubes routed to the bottom of the generators, and it will only send the coal when there is space. Obviously, it would be best if all of the generators needed the coal at the exact same time, but it should still work marvelously.

 

[Nefroz]

I'd make a butt ton of Coal Coke furnaces and start piping it in with a chunk loader, set up Pipes to pump out the coal coke and others to pump in fresh coal and pipes to pump out cresote into a glass tank, behind the glass tank have a Deployer/Blockbreaker loop set up so ever 2 minutes your tank gets broken and replaced to rid yourself of cresote (unless you plan on using it) You could also pipe the coal coke directly into generators which are hooked up to MFE's (which are kinda easy to make if you have alot of rubies and redstone) It takes time to cook the coke but if you are gonna run power off coal, its the best way, running multiple coke furnaces would be ideal.