Why is this Industrial Steam Engine about to explode?

[Moleculor]

I have an Industrial Steam Engine pointed at a Refinery.

The steam engine is powered by a single high-pressure boiler (1x1). So it's not even running at the full 8MJ/t capacity it has, but instead at 4MJ/t.

The refinery isn't running as quickly as it could (the efficiency bars are blue, one step up from "dead red"), so it's not getting as much power as it could be, but it IS receiving power.

The engine itself is in the dark red, just a few moments from exploding.

http://imgur.com/Hq7yHWv

 

[nethervvoid]

I've heard other people having issues with hooking up engines directly to machines. Try adding a conductive wooden pipe -> conductive gold pipe -> refinery. It's a little like adding a buffer. Or switch to conduits. Those seem to be better in almost every way.

 

[KirinDave]

I have an Industrial Steam Engine pointed at a Refinery.

The steam engine is powered by a single high-pressure boiler (1x1). So it's not even running at the full 8MJ/t capacity it has, but instead at 4MJ/t.

The refinery isn't running as quickly as it could (the efficiency bars are blue, one step up from "dead red"), so it's not getting as much power as it could be, but it IS receiving power.

The engine itself is in the dark red, just a few moments from exploding.

http://imgur.com/Hq7yHWv

I think it's producing a LOT more power than is being consumed. I thought the railcraft engines didn't explode in this case, but rather shut down and required a whack with a wrench.

In any case most BC engines will complain if they are radically outproducing their target. I solved this problem using an RP2 state cell and a timer cell. The timer produces an output signal once every 30 seconds, and the state cell drives the engine on for 15 seconds. This produces a long 15 percent duty cycle for the engine (in my case, it was a magmatic engine that was powering a pump and it'd keep shutting off without a 2/3 duty cycle).

EDIT: Adding an intermediate pipe that is not a redstone conduit will probably result in power buildup, which will probably result in an explosion.

 

[nethervvoid]

Best (but complicated) solution.

1. Get a redstone energy cell.
2. Run conduits between the engine, cell, and refinery.
3. Have a gate on a structural pipe right next to the cell that will send a redstone signal to the engine if the energy cell has room for energy.
4. The engine will turn on when the cell has room for energy and then shut off if / when it's full.

That is assuming the engine doesn't require some kind of cool down or start up when you turn it on and off.

 

[Moleculor]

I've heard other people having issues with hooking up engines directly to machines. Try adding a conductive wooden pipe -> conductive gold pipe -> refinery. It's a little like adding a buffer. Or switch to conduits. Those seem to be better in almost every way.

That was it, thanks. A simple wood>gold worked, fixed everything. Instead of it building up to 29000+ MJ in the buffer, it equalized at 5000MJ.

 

[nethervvoid]

That was it, thanks. A simple wood>gold worked, fixed everything. Instead of it building up to 29000+ MJ in the buffer, it equalized at 5000MJ.

YW just be careful that not too much power builds up in your buildcraft pipes else they explode. ;D

 

[KirinDave]

That was it, thanks. A simple wood>gold worked, fixed everything. Instead of it building up to 29000+ MJ in the buffer, it equalized at 5000MJ.

Just be careful, because pipe buildups will explode.

The setup I explained earlier looks like this:

Spoiler

The timer is set at 30, the state cell is at 15. The engine never overheats, and hovers around 3500 mj stored.

It's been running for 9 days chunkloaded with not even so much as a hiccup.

 

[AlanEsh]

Redstone energy conduits saved my life.
True story!

 

[Moleculor]

I'm not sure buildup even exists in the beta pack, as I've seen a series of eight combustion engines pouring energy into pipes, and that energy was doing nothing (quarry was done).

Regardless, one steam engine at half power isn't going to make anything explode. Two at full *might*, but I'm experimenting now.

 

[drazath]

Redstone energy conduits saved my life.
True story!

In my test world (mindcrack v8), the industrial steam engines I tested built up their internal storage even when connected to conduits (or even an energy cell directly). I guess it's intended behavior to a degree? They stayed green throughout and had just under 10k MJ stored.

On a somewhat related note: can steam boilers explode if the internal steam storage is full, or just when the water runs out?

 

[AlanEsh]

In my test world (mindcrack v8), the industrial steam engines I tested built up their internal storage even when connected to conduits (or even an energy cell directly). I guess it's intended behavior to a degree? They stayed green throughout and had just under 10k MJ stored.

Mine pump all day long and while they do build up their internal energy, they never go pop.

 

[netmc]

Buildcraft engines dump *all* of their power when the moving bar hits the front of the engine. Their power is built up through the rest of the animation, then dumped in all at once. The internal buffer of most machines cannot handle that much power all at once, so most of it can't leave the engine.

So, if you have an engine producing 4MJ/tick, and if the engine pulses once per second (20 ticks), that is 80MJ delivered in one tick. If the engine pules twice per second, it works out to 40MJ delivered in one tick. If the machine you are powering can only use/store 20MJ at a time(tick), in the first cast, the machine takes 20MJ, leaving 60 still in the engine with nowhere to go. The next pulse, the machine takes 20MJ more, leaving 60MJ additional in the engine with now 120MJ stored. In the second case with 2 engine pulses per second, the machine would take 20MJ, leaving 20MJ in the engine. The next pulse, the machine would take another 20MJ, and leave another 20MJ in the engine for a total of 40MJ. Much better than the 120MJ in the first scenario, but will still eventually overload the engine.

Since buildcraft power can be "stored" in the pipe, the pipe absorbs the power from the engine, then trickles out the power to the machines over several ticks and averages it instead of the massive power spikes when powering a machine directly.

 

[MilConDoin]

On a somewhat related note: can steam boilers explode if the internal steam storage is full, or just when the water runs out?

They will explode if the water runs out and is then readded, while the boiler is still hot (instant evaporization, leading to a big bang).
Just put an aqueous accumulator beneath it with two water source blocks at the side and be safe forever. Almost forever. Because if you put wintry bees (freezing effect) too close, the water will turn to ice, your AqAcc will slow down too much and your boiler will fall dry.

 

[drazath]

Yep the water isn't an issue when you use the accumulators, I was just wondering whether the steam can blow it up too if it has nowhere to go. When I tested it didn't seem to be the case, but then again I didn't let it run idle for that long (maybe a few minutes total).

Come to think of it, some kind of safety outlet vent would be neat if the internal pressure builds up too high.

 

[NightKev]

Buildcraft engines dump *all* of their power when the moving bar hits the front of the engine.

Actually they have a max output per pulse, so that's not true.

 

[Poppycocks]

Actually they have a max output per pulse, so that's not true.

Which is luckily higher than their normal output, so the internal buffer will discharge eventually if it has somewhere to go.

The fact that engines, dump massive loads of energy when the bar hits the end is a big problem, especially with bigger engines. For example even a redstone energy cell can't take all of the energy of a fuel powered combustion engine. Conductives help, but this is where conduits really shine. Especially if you've got a big battery of engines.

By the way, this is also why bluelectric engines are so efficient, they pump much faster and therefore discharge the energy more often. This is great for powering machines directly, because the individual bursts fit into the buffer and are filled in often enough to keep the buffer topped.

 

[Bigglesworth]

Use conduits. using normal pipes is just transfering your problem to a slightly later time in the future. Contuits wont solve the issue instead of pushing it into the near future.

 

[Poppycocks]

Use conduits. using normal pipes is just transfering your problem to a slightly later time in the future. Contuits wont solve the issue instead of pushing it into the near future.

You mean "will", right?

The best part about conduits is... that they disperse overflow. Sure, you lose energy, but hey, it's much better than losing your equipment.

 

[AlanEsh]

Semi-related question ... I have a bank of steam engines feeding a bar of redstone energy conduits. That bar of conduits terminates in a bank of 3x redstone energy cells. These cells feed into another row of redstone conduits connected to a row of machines. (I hope that makes sense). Everything was full, so I turned off my steam engines, went to bed; next day my redstone energy cells were empty.
None of my machines were running, my energy tesseract was toggled off... so where did my stored MJ go? Thanks for any clues.

 

[Abdiel]

What kind of machines? Several of them drain a little bit of power continuously whether they're being used or not (rolling machines, thermionic fabricators).