What was original reason for creating Cells in IC? Anyone remember?

Im not a fan of items like portable tanks from TE3 myself, i think they are very cheap compared to vanilla buckets. 1 metal ingot, holds 8 buckets. Its not balanced vs buckets at all. Ideally id like to see things that give greater utility cost noticeably more, or have some other drawback.

So that brings up Cells. 4 tin instead of 3 iron to hold 1000 mb of liquid, but... you can stack 16 of them into an inventory slot even when full. was this the idea behind them? To make a bucket that was stackable, and then make them a big more expensive to make up for that?

Now compare this to a low end portable tank from TE3, to hold 8000 mb of fluid in your inventory in IC2, you have to spend 32 tin. With a portable tank, you only need 1 tin (?) and 4 glass.

Does anyone remember if this is why clls were made, and why? To give you a stackable bucket, for a price?

Quote from SpwnX

Original intent IMO: Allow liquids to be used as an item, for recipes/processing and such.

Also IC2 =! TE , comparing prices wont lead anywhere.
By the way, you cant use TE tank in GT recipes, for example.

I just try to balance the mods I play. People almost always go for the cheapest option so to me its useful to compare prices to things. I use TE3 but the items are so cheap that ill probably have to drop it. I wanted to use minetweaker to increase costs of some things, but apparently it wont work with TE3.

That was why i noticed, IMO, that cells were well balanced vs buckets. Same amount per cell, but you gain stackability for the 1 extra ingot. I didnt think it was due to recipes as you can use buckets in recipes. Oh well though, I was just curious.