How to set up a wind farm?

Quote from Ldog

Well wouldn't the problem with doing that be that you can't run gold more than 2 meters without losing power?

Why would you use gold wire? Copper works just fine on my layout with no loss.

Quote from HeadHunter67

Why would you use gold wire? Copper works just fine on my layout with no loss.

What MJEvans and you were discussing with the transformers. Don't you have to use gold cable with 128 EU packets?
Or was he just saying to replace all the batboxes in your setup with them? I guess I'm a bit confused.

I am seeing why not to use tin though; it slags in t-storms. Seems tin is really only for solar power.

Yes, your setup does works great as is. Charged the MFE up in no time, once I realized everything I was doing wrong (trans facing wrong sides, not properly redstoning, couple bat boxes facing wrong way lol)
It was a very good learning experience for me building it. Now when I get around to building that nuke plant I won't blow it up instantly (well not because of improper wiring at least)

Windgen is definitly very powerful. Just a single generator at around 110ish (I didn't go to the top but ran 39 tin cable from the batbox on my roof) is enough to power a starter shop (1 each extractor, furnace, macerator, compactor, canner) almost continuously.

Quote from Ldog

What MJEvans and you were discussing with the transformers. Don't you have to use gold cable with 128 EU packets?
Or was he just saying to replace all the batboxes in your setup with them? I guess I'm a bit confused.

The three boxes along the centerline (next to the ladder) are the only transformers I use. I think MJEvans' idea was to put two LVTs face-to-face, so that it setps the 32 up to 128 and then distributes it as 4 packets of 32 out the other end. I have my doubts as to how useful or economical that is, and I like having the buffer on each mill.

Glad you were able to get it set up and I'm pleased to hear that it's working well for you!

Quote from DrSNAFU

Your setup looks pretty cool. The solars are a nice addition. I do see a couple of things I’d like to comment on.

That is just an awful lot of gold wiring and copper wiring and transformers and space to devote to one wind-gen taking up a 5x5 square in the sky. I just don’t believe this configuration is more efficient than that tower config your neighbor is using. Not to mention the footprint it’s taking up…

The solar panels are a great addition, however the wind-gens check empty blocks up to TWO levels below it. So that ring of 4 solars around the gen’s base lower its effective height by four blocks.

You've got the right idea using transformers, but they're more suited to accomidating multiple gens. And the lengths of gold cable are probably putting the hurtin' on your output. Why not just use copper for the four lengths between each transformer, link them together that way?

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Yeah, I realised that the generator/transformer ratio could have been better when building it. Initially, it used purely tin cables feeding 2 LV transformers, which then fed an HV transformer - and it would have stayed that way had the tin cables not kept on melting. The only solution after that was transformers (batboxes are *expensive*) and I couldn't think of a way of linking more than 2 windgens to one transformer without having a cable length greater than 4 from at least one of the windgens. Since transformers are pretty cheap (we've got both IC2 and RP copper being generated and this particular facility sits right on top of a 400 tree farm, half of which are rubber trees), it seemed easier to keep the existing layout and just replace the wiring.

As for losses, the tree farm's 41x41 across (and hence so is the platform above it and the furthest a packet will have to go is from the corner to the centre of an edge, then from that edge to the opposite edge - a distance of 60 blocks, which is a loss of 15% on a 128 EU packet. Having copper cable which is 5 blocks long when wiring up multiple windgens to one transformer will result in a 1 EU loss - if windgens put out an average of 3 EU/t at the top of the world, you're losing a full third of your power that way. And then you still have to get the energy to to the HV transformer, incurring further losses. I'm not too bothered about occlusion from the 3 solar panels below the wind turbines (I don't have 4, since one of the horizontal spaces is needed to hold the redstone torch), since the extra 1.5EU/t will more than make up the difference caused by 3 blocks less height.

Space-efficiency, then no - this system is not as efficient as the tower configuration next to it. I was going to say something about it being more efficient in terms of EU/generator, but measuring both at night gives me 74.7 for the 40-generator tower and 190.55 for the 81-generator platform. So the platform is only 1.26 times as efficient per generator - not that much of a boost considering that the tower is lower and has all of the windgens interfering with each other. In any case, I'm not particularly bothered about space efficiency here, since nobody is using the space at the top of the world anyway.

EU efficiency - it's slightly better. Each of those windgens on that tower get occlusion from the ones next to them on the same level and the ones above them, so the effective height is a lot less. Measured at night, the output from the tower (40 windgens) is, while the high-altitude power plant (81 windgens) gives off. And although it's a minor point, the tower was built with admin power-conjured glass fibre cable and MFSUs at the very beginning of the server, while the sky platform was made with the sweat and toil of the players' diamond drills.

Quote from DoomFruit

The only solution after that was transformers (batboxes are *expensive*)

Comparatively, a batbox is not much different in terms of expense than a pair of LVTs.

Transformers: 8 planks, 6 copper, 4 cables, 1 redstone torch
Batbox: 5 planks, 12 tin, 4 cables, 6 redstone.

If tin and resdtone are that much harder for you to find, you're probably not at the point where you need this kind of power generation. Keep in mind that if you can afford to build an MFSU (10 diamonds, 38 lapis, 110 redstone, 2 glowstone, 32 iron, 82 rubber, 42 copper, 4 tin, 16 coal)... you probably don't consider a few redtone and a half-dozen tin to be "expensive".

Quote from HeadHunter67

Comparatively, a batbox is not much different in terms of expense than a pair of LVTs.

Transformers: 8 planks, 6 copper, 4 cables, 1 redstone torch
Batbox: 5 planks, 12 tin, 4 cables, 6 redstone.

If tin and resdtone are that much harder for you to find, you're probably not at the point where you need this kind of power generation. Keep in mind that if you can afford to build an MFSU (10 diamonds, 38 lapis, 110 redstone, 2 glowstone, 32 iron, 82 rubber, 42 copper, 4 tin, 16 coal)... you probably don't consider a few redtone and a half-dozen tin to be "expensive".

There was precisely one legit MFSU in the game at this stage - all the others were conjured out of thin air with admin powers. While tin isn't that hard to come by, copper is massively more abundant and redstone seems to be unusually rare in our map - I'm lucky if my quartet of miners digs up two stacks during one operation (EDIT: last mining operation gave 38 redstone). Redstone was also in high demand for other things - in particular, the Redpower components (and several IC machines) to build the automated stone and glass factories which were needed to make the materials that everything else in the city is constructed out of. Even now, the best way to get redstone in any usable quantity is to use UU matter and make it.

We had one mass fabber built fairly early on that just sat on our initial 20 solar and 3 Redpower-fed water mill power bus and very, very slowly produced UU matter. That was the biggest power drain.

Maybe a wind farm could be set up like this...

Im not good at calculating efficiency but would that work?

Edit: Sorry about the spacing fail

That could work - given the understanding that the lower mills will produce slightly less energy, not only from the lower altitude but also from the wind mill and wires above it.

Look at the side viewon the Wiki to see what I mean.

That would mean that the setup of

would be extreamly inefficient. Yes I know that obvious statment is obvious but why would you use a inefficient design?

Personally, I wouldn't advocate such a design. But some people are willing to compromise efficiency in the interest of a compact design.

Quote from DoomFruit

There was precisely one legit MFSU in the game at this stage - all the others were conjured out of thin air with admin powers. While tin isn't that hard to come by, copper is massively more abundant and redstone seems to be unusually rare in our map - I'm lucky if my quartet of miners digs up two stacks during one operation (EDIT: last mining operation gave 38 redstone). Redstone was also in high demand for other things - in particular, the Redpower components (and several IC machines) to build the automated stone and glass factories which were needed to make the materials that everything else in the city is constructed out of. Even now, the best way to get redstone in any usable quantity is to use UU matter and make it.

We had one mass fabber built fairly early on that just sat on our initial 20 solar and 3 Redpower-fed water mill power bus and very, very slowly produced UU matter. That was the biggest power drain.

I wonder if you are accounting for the presence of lava pools blocking the redstone below some depth? I find if I neglect to place cells in my pumps, I have to run the miners a second time (cells included this time) to get any decent redstone yield. Like you, I'm running a quad setup. Mine is 18x18.

Quote from tohrik

What way can I set up my wind farm to make it to produce the most power/efficiency? (in multiplayer)

It appears people put them high but then put them very close lowering the effective height below 80 so they don't explode (Effective height = hight - amount of blocks nearby; see the wiki) while keep efficiency/compactness high.

Wind mills over 80 can explode in storms :(.

Explode? Mine just stopped working, which was annoying because I had to figure out why i wasn't getting any power after the storm blew through.

Remember however that every block in their airspace counts as lowering their level by 1, so if you have a big tower of windmills you can place them up higher to compensate for the fact that a lot of the airspace is obstructed.

If you care about squeezing just a touch more efficiency out of the system, you can make the flowers only 3 blocks tall (12 windmills per tower), so they're all in approximately the same boat efficiency wise. The gens on the bottom will be at -4 levels to the gens up top, which means you can put the top gens right up at level 92 for maximum efficiency without the chance of random failure.