Using a reed farm for power.

I've been looking at a similar concept myself, except using cacti, which have the added benefit of not needing pistons or redstone circuitry to be automatically harvested.

Remember, too, that to fill a can with bio-fuel requires not only the 1.5 tin, but also twelve compression operations at 625 EU each and six extractions at 313 EU each.

16200 - (625x12 + 313x6) = 6822 EU. You're better off just burning them raw.

Does reeds and cactus grow at the same rate? Or is it random?

I started building one of these, but stopped when I realized how big it would have to be to be useful. There are cheaper ways to make power. Cactus would probably work though. Still needs to be pretty big, but it would be much cheaper since you no longer need the pistons.

Hmm....I could probably build a system of 5 pistons that could harvest 12 reeds though.

EDIT: Ok, reducing the pistons just means I use more Redstone Wire (x3) so in the end I save no iron and its much more complicated.

you are better off just making a much larger cacti farm which is fully automated and doesnt use iron
you will soon get an overflow of cacti unless you make more generators
cacti farms are really great as you can make them as big as you want and they stack vertically with ease with water flowing at the bottom towards a single obsidian pipe collection point which can then be evenly distributed to many generators

i've made some tests and with a farm of 64 cactus i get 1 cactus every 25 sec. and i need 1,23 sec to burn a cactus in a generator.

this mean i'll need 25/1.23= 20,32 time more cactus to have a constant 5 eu/s from my generator.

20,32x64 = 1300 cactus.

nvm, i prefer use this time to find some iron and turn it into 10 solar panel (1 eu/t during day so 0.5eu/t average = 5 eu/s) . sometimes in one trip to the layer 13 i come back with 40 iron ore, just enought to craft my panels and i even have a chance to find some diamonds or other valuables ressources. and i didn't lost my time to build a gigantic and ugly cobblestone building :x

however i have a cactus farm too, but i found better to turn cactus into scraps and feed a matter generator with pipes from buildcraft ^^. it don't give me enought scraps to feed my matter generator plugged to 60 solar panels but it still better than nothing when i run out of cobble/dirt/gravels to recycle

Yeah the good thing about cacti farms is they can be both an energy source and a source of scrap
and solar panels are the best method of energy generation (on the surface)

Well I went ahead and finished my reed farm anyway since I had nothing else better to do while waiting for the 1.8 version so I can start a new world.

The farm outputs about 3 EU/t on average and lags like hell. There are 6 rows of 45 reeds for a total of 270 blocks (and 270 pistons). It looks pretty cool, like a real farm, something I think would be hard with a cactus farm. But oh god the lag!

Now I need to find a new use for 270 pistons.

Quote from CovertJaguar

Now I need to find a new use for 270 pistons.

Keep them somewhere an wait for the BuildCraft 2.2 release : you will use them to make engines to build a mechanical power plant (watch the video preview on SpaceToad's Youtube channel to see what I'm talking about)

how often do you pulse the pistons? ive found that once every 210 seconds is ample
also I find that reed farms are not very efficient as you always loose some of the reeds on the edges

Quote from FourFire

how often do you pulse the pistons? ive found that once every 210 seconds is ample
also I find that reed farms are not very efficient as you always loose some of the reeds on the edges

Check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZUPXs1TZD4 around 6:00
There is an example on how to fully automate it. I'm sure there are better designs out there, but this one works great!

Quote from xlkaaz

Check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZUPXs1TZD4 around 6:00
There is an example on how to fully automate it. I'm sure there are better designs out there, but this one works great!

And as you can see at 6:33 that there are some still hanging on the dirt this is the loss which cannot be automatically collected
yes i already have an automated reed farm design myself but for stuff to burn in generators cactus is much more efficient both in space and in resource use and efficiency perspective

I've found that if you pulse the pistons often enough to keep the reeds from growing more than two blocks high you get very little reed flying outside the collection area. But that depends largely on your design. I have collections pipes every two blocks under the pistons and pipes for collecting reeds that fall in the water.

And I dont think the pistons are causing the lag, because it still lags when I take out the sequencer controlling them. Unless their mere presence lags.

The reeds in the picture are 3 blocks tall because the pistons were disabled when I took the pic.

Quote

And as you can see at 6:33 that there are some still hanging on the dirt this is the loss which cannot be automatically collected
yes i already have an automated reed farm design myself but for stuff to burn in generators cactus is much more efficient both in space and in resource use and efficiency perspective

i have another problem with my cactus farm too, sometimes cactus are poping on the top of theirselves. and when a free block is near from a cactus it destroy it

do you know how to avoid that ?

Quote from FourFire

And as you can see at 6:33 that there are some still hanging on the dirt this is the loss which cannot be automatically collected
yes i already have an automated reed farm design myself but for stuff to burn in generators cactus is much more efficient both in space and in resource use and efficiency perspective

If you put a wall between sections, and let the top piston go 1 tick before the bottom one, the problem is solved!

I once did a cactus farm for power on my IC1 private server. The farm went from Y 73 to 111 and used BuildCraft collectors to make the result go to the single generator. That got me a rate of a few (like 10?) cacti per minute.

I've got a cacti farm in my current ic2 world. It gets me around 100 per minute, which gets sucked up by obsidian pipes and is sent to a chest right outside my door. I have it set up so i can send them to generators to run my house. Course 100 solar panels help as well.

Quote from RichardG

I once did a cactus farm for power on my IC1 private server. The farm went from Y 73 to 111 and used BuildCraft collectors to make the result go to the single generator. That got me a rate of a few (like 10?) cacti per minute.

how wide and long was your cacti farm?
8x8?
16x16?
36X36?

If I remember correctly it had 2x4 cactus slots, and went from level 73 to 111.