Nether Power Generation

1st Official Post

    Does anyone have any suggestions on how to make a long-term (20M EU minimum) unattended power source in the nether capable of outputting at least 50EU/t?
    Solar panels are not possible, as are water mills. Generators are also not really feasible (1000 charcoal?). This leaves windmills, geothermal generators, or nuclear reactors. I am using redpower2 and buildcraft3. So does anyone have any ideas on designs? (I am beside a giant lava pool, in case that gives you any ideas).


    (Note that nuclear reactors in the nether cannot use water!)

    Pump that lava ocean! Geothermal generators put out 10EU/t, so 6-7 of those will give you your required 50EU/t plus some extra to run the pumps. As for nuclear reactor, you could go for a SUC (single use coolant) design, though that would require bringing in water cells/ice from the surface world.

    with BC2, IC2 and RP2 you can make geothermal generators in the nether. first pump the lava into tank with BC2. then use RP2 deployer right next to the tank filled with buckets. it will fill the bucket with lava from the tank, use RP2's filter to suck out the lava buckets and tube those to the geothermal gens, then have filter to suck out empty buckets and you have it... or you could just download the IC2/BC2 advance generators or something and be done with it.

    I'll examine what's possible with just vanilla IC2, aside from nuclear, which I don't know enough about.


    Each lava cell is 20k energy, and each reactor can hold 12 lava cells or buckets worth of energy directly, plus a stack of lava cells in reserve. This comes out to over 1.5 million total energy. With 14 full geothermal generators, you'd have over 20 million power generating over time, and no need for piping lava. Just right click on the lava pool to fill up your lava cells, and wear some quantum chest armor to be safe.


    Theoretically, you could also use water mills, if you bring ice (compressed snowballs) into the nether, place them, then break them. However, you'd need hundreds of them to get 50 EU/t, so that seems impractical for you.


    I'd stay away from windmills, since they seem vulnerable to ghasts unless you build enormous walls around them.


    Maybe a mix of geothermal and water would work, though?

    Quote from Root Infinity

    Hmm...
    Geothermal may be an option.
    Does anyone know what the pump radii of the three (IC2, BC3, RP2) types of pumps are?


    BC's pumps have quite the pump radius. see the images I took a while ago here (also a shot of the lava cell factory in there as well)
    With this addon you won't even need to make lava cells, it includes a geothermal generator that'll accept lava direct from a pipe.


    oh: and there's only two pumps, RP2 doesn't include one.

    Buildcrafts pump radius is 64 blocks centered on the pump. So that's 25k worth of lava blocks, assuming that radius is just half lava. Go for it mate.

    Quote from zippinus

    I hate to ask a dumb question, but why wouldn't watermills work? Vanilla MC enchant for silk touch, collect ice, place in nether, create nether water farm.


    Why using garbage enchating? Why not make ice in a compresser (water cells->snowballs-> ice)

    Quote from zippinus

    I apologize. I was unaware of the change in silk touch, and the compressor hadn't crossed my mind, but the point still stands. Water mills are viable power in the nether.


    not really... maybe with bucket filler but that one's rather broken at the moment. (won't load for me server side)
    Anyway, I had a manned water mill setup with RP2 deployers. Worked fine until I let it run overnight. In the morning it was mysteriously broken (no power, buckets weren't cycling) so I ripped that setup out and put in a couple water filters or whatever they're called from Power Converters. That's thankfully been working fine.

    I REALLY prefer the adv. Geo-Gens from the power converters mod. BC pipe right into the genny and it just works. If you want untended with exclusively IC2, you are going to want to go with nuclear if you are also mining in the overworld, or wind/water if you aren't.


    You're choices are simple. If you want untended power, you need to buy new machines (install power converters), use massive, unstable pipe systems, or go with nukes.

    Quote from Ranakastrasz

    Why using garbage enchating? Why not make ice in a compresser (water cells->snowballs-> ice)


    What happens if you put a snow golem in nether? does it make snow poop on nether blocks?


    If you can make snow blocks in nether with a golem then use my CASUC design i just posted in the nuclear engineering section.

    Quote from Corbald

    I REALLY prefer the adv. Geo-Gens from the power converters mod. BC pipe right into the genny and it just works. If you want untended with exclusively IC2, you are going to want to go with nuclear if you are also mining in the overworld, or wind/water if you aren't.


    You're choices are simple. If you want untended power, you need to buy new machines (install power converters), use massive, unstable pipe systems, or go with nukes.


    unstable? suuuure they are.
    In my previous world I loaded up a chest full of empty cells in the nether and after an overnight run I was greeted with a full chest of lava cells for transport back to the "normal" world.
    granted I used a bucket filler and those are broke with 2.2.10 for me but one could just as easily use BC to pump lava into a tank and use a RP2 deployer.

    You should be able to make a bucket CASUC in the Nether. I think that once you actually get water down there, it behaves normally - you just can't place it via buckets.


    So, compress yourself some ice blocks, place them to make your coolant pool, place torches around to melt them, then proceed as in the overworld. Just be sure to mind the chunk boundaries or plan to stay down there while it's running...


    Same sort of thing should work for massive obsidian harvesting with BC quarries.