Energy Usage

1st Official Post

    Hi!


    I am using a private Server (Multiplayer) with Minecraft Forge based on the 1.7.10 Version with several mods including IC2 experimental (quite new version 68x).


    We are quite satisfied with IC2 (very nice mod) :thumbup: but we have bigger problems with our energy supply. ?(


    In the beginning we used the new experimental mode (useLinearTransferModel = True), but this seems to be very buggy since we had lots of energy with only a few wind generators (it seems like, that the cable produce EU energy on their own).


    I could even easily support mass production (the attached MFSU had an constant output of 2k EU, even 8k until I reassigned it).


    To get a more "realistic" game play I switched that mode off and now we are (of course) low on energy.


    Therefore I started to build up some nuclear plants (thanks to all those tutorials). But now we got a new problem: an uranium cell is depleted after one day (real time). ;(


    Now I have to exchange those cells every day which is also not very realistic. I have found no setting in the IC2.ini config to change that behaviour. Also the energy output is not very high (compared to wind generators). E.g. there is a nice setup with four quad-uranium cells with an output of 340 EU/tick in EU mode (non-fluid), but I can get that energy from two wind generators which run for a quite a long time until I have to assign new rotor blades.


    To get a good energy supply there seems to be the only solution to set up a big wind park with wind generators.


    Any suggestions or ideas?


    Thanks Ralf

    It actually lasts about 5 hours. That's just how it works sadly, it's a balance thing. The good news is, you can stockpile that plutonium from the depleted cells, and that can be used to make RTG batteries that do last a realistic time (that is, forever, since the game isn't keyed for 10,000 year top off cycles).


    They should really get the uranium density up to something like this, nobody would ever complain about the cost of industrialcraft reactors again.


    • Official Post

    You can tweak how much power windmills and nuclear reactors give out in the config, so you could nerf one or buff the other if you wanted to.

    145 Mods isn't too many. 9 types of copper and 8 types of tin aren't too many. 3 types of coffee though?

    I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realise that what you read was not what I meant.


    ---- Minecraft Crash Report ----
    // I just don't know what went wrong :(


    I see this too much.

    Thanks for the hints.


    Using RTG pallets is a nice idea (already started), on the other hand they only produce 16 EU/t.
    To tweak the power output of nuclear plants doesn't really helps since I still have to exchange the uranium cells every day.


    The wind park is still the best option, additionally I am going to check for extra modules (any suggestions?).


    Thanks
    Ralf

    FWIW, a fully populated RTG provides 32 EU/t, despite the tooltip that say 16 EU/t.


    As far as extending the life of the uranium fuel rods, I think you can do that somewhat by setting up redstone circuitry to run the cells for only part of the time, and I've realized that with the 5x5x5 fluid reactor, it can continue outputting heat (and hot coolant) for conversion to EU via stirling generators even when the redstone signal is off (or superheated steam if you can figure that out - I don't understand how to get superheated steam working properly myself). For example, here's a design I just came up with in my planner:
    000D0D0D0D0D0D0D00000D0D0000000D0D00000D00030303000D00000D00030303000D00000D0D0000000D0D00000D0D0D0D0D0D0D00
    With v1.2.6 of my planner, it looks like if you can set up a redstone signal cycle that goes on for 10 seconds, then off for 24 seconds, that would produce an average of at least 946 HU/s (which becomes 473 EU/t with enough LHEs and stirling generators) and lasts 3.4 times as long as running a reactor constantly.


    Admittedly, that's only 18.8 hours, which compares poorly to the 168 hours (1 week real-time) that carbon wind rotors can last. Potentially longer if you consider the safety features you'll want to pause the redstone signal for longer when the buffers (e.g. in your MFSU(s)) are full, but that's impractical to calculate ahead of time, and maybe somebody else can improve on my design to get longer life out of them.