Hmm, I see what you mean. I never realized that steam was fed to the turbine in the form of rising steam blocks and not piped in through e.g. a nozzle of some sort.I like the idea, but worry about implementation. It means three new fluids, four new steam types (each with their own block IDs), and a total rewrite of turbine code.
Oh well, I suppose it doesn't hurt to throw ideas around, but I agree that integrating a variable-pressure-level turbine setup (or even a casing for the turbines to reduce how much needs to be rendered) into that sort of system might be more trouble than it's worth. Even so, there must be a better, more realistic way to reduce the total number of turbines required - or more importantly, the rendering cost - than to add "super" turbines as was mentioned earlier in the thread.
After watching you fiddle with all of the toroid magnets for about 10 minutes, I have to wonder if there's a reason they aren't simply placed facing away from the player à la mob heads. It would certainly be convenient only to have to smack the things with a screwdriver once or twice rather than about 16 times once you're on the far side, which works out to about 272 adjustments for the whole apparatus.
Looks fun, anyway, I can't wait to build one for myself.