Well I've started with this a few days ago. I love it. One the things I was curious about though was machine power consumption. The rate of power passing over wires and its use in things like bat boxes and converters is fairly well documented, however how the machines use it isn't. I would like to get some of the details on how the machines actually use the energy they are absorbing to better setup my circuits and factories.
This is how I understand the flow. So each machine has an input slot, a fuel slot, an output slot and what looks like a fuel/power reserve. When the reserve is not full it draws power from any input wires at, I'm guessing, up to 32 Eu/t for normal machines then adds it to the reserve. When an item is put in the machine's input slot it draws power from the reserve at some unknown rate per tick to process the next step of the input item into the output. If the reserve reaches empty the machine needs to wait until there is enough energy in the reserve to process the next step.
What I am interested in is that unknown rate per tick that the machine draws energy from its reserve. If you could insure that the current flowing into the machine was equal to the current that was drawn by the machine to do its processing you could insure that you wouldn't empty out your reserve and spend time waiting for the machine to get more energy. Or does none of this matter and I'm making a big deal out of nothing?