How to set up a wind farm?

  • Obviously the best efficiency would be at the top of the world, I don't use wind power person ally but if I remember for the best effect they should be about 5 spaces apart to keep peak power. I would suggest using LV cabling BUT till the next update Windmills can burn them out if they spike and get a full charge.

  • agreed. at the top of the world for the most energy.


    A few more tips. A lot of people use HV cable to transport the energy to the ground, as the huge 2048EU pulses get way less energy loss than lower levels, and are cheaper to make than a raft of batboxes.


    Me being me would use Glass fibre all the way and have a 128 or 512 system so as to produce 0 energy losses, (depending on how large) and spend eons getting the resources needed. Knowing this I don't tend to make wind farms. How much I like the idea.


    Goodluck, let me know if there are any other issues.

    Hell, prove me wrong, Happy to be so 99% of the time, then I can learn stuff :)

  • It's /possible/ to engineer long glass-fibre runs if you 'reboost' the signal (read the forums). Otherwise glass-fibre runs 39 blocks without loss Tin also runs 39 blocks without loss. copper runs 4 without loss (IIRC), and HV cable is more or less only lossless at one block (with at least a bit of insulation; but you'll want 4x insulation for other reasons).

  • My wind farm is 16 mills at level 127, stepped up to EV and run down to the house via 60m of fully insulated HV cable. It generates 500k EU per day and I get 2000 EU out of every packet, losing only 48. I could use glass fibre cable, but spending 15 diamonds for a difference between 97.6% efficiency and 99.9% efficiency is absurd. The setup would need to run for more than 5 hours of play to even recoup the expense of the glass fibre wire. It's just more sensible and cost-effective to use EV and HV cable.

  • I'm unsure why people don't want to spend/use diamonds, they're there for a reason! I play legit and run glass fibre everywhere, for high and medium voltage, anyhow. :huh:

  • I'm unsure why people don't want to spend/use diamonds, they're there for a reason!


    Yes - there are plenty of other things I can use diamonds for - Quarries, Loggers, Foresters, Drills, Teleporters... meanwhile, regular old refined iron and rubber does the job almost as well as glass fibre for this purpose.


    In addition to the diamonds I find from my various mining methods, I'm constantly making more from UU-M or coal. But it's not as if I hoard them - I simply use the for things for which there is no substitute.

  • I don't think chasing maximum efficiency is worth spreading windmills around the clouds. I stacked 8 windmills along both sides of a cable (16 total windmills) around levels 80-90 and they seemed to average about 20 EU/t which is better than solar plus runs through the night.

  • Mine is a 16x16 platform - about the size of my house below it. If you put those mills at the build limit, you'd get more than double that power. It's not too hard.

  • So the setup would be like this? (machine to machine) :Wind Mill: :Glass Fibre: :Batbox: :Glass Fibre: :MFE-Transmitter: :Glass Fibre: :HV-Transformer: (redstoned) :Glass Fibre: :HV-Transformer: :Glass Fibre: MV-Transformer :Glass Fibre: :MFE-Transmitter: :Glass Fibre: :LV-Transformer: :Glass Fibre: :Batbox: :Glass Fibre: :Batbox: ... ect


    Is there a way to do this that is more resource efficient?

  • Yeah. You can step up directly from combined generator feeds I don't know how that works if the link cable has loss; I've never built lossful links for transmission since my first flirtations with HV cable, an MFSU and a single remote miner. Did -not- go well, packet wastage.

  • No, it wouldn't be hard. I put the first 8 windmills up before I could afford much glass fibre cable so I used a couple Batbox and copper up on my roof. It turned out to work surprisingly well so when I later needed more power, I just added another Batbox and 8 more windmills. In the end it turned out to be "good enough" and eventually filled an MSFU I use to recharge my quantum suit. I built a dedicated nuclear plant to power my Mass Fabricator. Now that I have more ore/metal than I can use, if I need more power, I'll probably just add another BatBox and extend the windmill tower up another level or two. About the only thing I could foresee needing a lot more power for would be if I start building teleporters.

    Mine is a 16x16 platform - about the size of my house below it. If you put those mills at the build limit, you'd get more than double that power. It's not too hard.

  • Here's how I did mine. It is based off a picture of someone else's plan that I saw here, but I cannot recall whose:



    Each windmill feeds into its own batbox, the outlying batboxes feed to the inner ones, and those at the end of the line feed to the output.
    What you see at the center is a series of redstoned transformers - LVT>MVT>HVT, and then there's a wooden pillar that goes down to my roof (ladder on one side, HV cable on the other). The HV cable ends at another HVT next to my MFSU. Works pretty nicely and not at all expensive to build.

  • This is my SMP wind farm
    <image snipped>
    Each Wind Tower has 32 wind mills with glass fiber cables [Tin cables can be used to reduce costs].
    Each Wind tower is connected to a Reversed MV transformer which sends energy directly to a massfab


    Wow, how much power does that pull in? Bound to be a little less efficient due to the many packed into one area thing but still...
    Also: Last I used them, windmills couldn't use tin cable as they can once in a while deliver more than the cable can handle so they'll burn it out.

    • Official Post

    This is my SMP wind farm



    Each Wind Tower has 32 wind mills with glass fiber cables
    Wind towers are connected to Reversed MV transformers which sends energy directly to a massfab/mfsu, using 1.337 EU-Splitter cables
    Each tower has 4 block spacing between to avoid lots of obstructions.
    My setup Has 1600 Wind mills [50 Wind Towers] Each tower gives about 40-120 EU/t Edit
    Outputs from 2000-6000 EU/t
    [Edit4] output is without thunderstorms/rain [Add 50%/20% if thundering/raining]
    Space used 64X10X32


    Pro Tip: 1.337 Special cables carry up to Extreme Voltage and has EU distance loss equal to tin cables [39 cable length for no EU loss]
    [Edit] on 1.43 Special cables carry only up to HV.
    [Edit5]1.7 Special cables are not good for long distance energy transport anymore

  • Also remember that wind mills are far cheaper than solars now. You don't really have to put them way up at the top of the map - as long as you're averaging 0.5EU/t out of them, you're still doing better than solar.


    An unobstructed (except for two cables) wind mill placed at level 75 - on top of a sea-level base, basically - will average 0.76 EU/t, or over 50% better than a solar panel (especially now that solar doesn't work during bad weather) for about 1/3 the cost.


    Using ((height - obstructions) * 250)/24000 for avg. eu/t


    I prefer to just build my base up on a mountain, which makes it all much easier. :)

    • Official Post

    Yes they are cheaper than solar, but people for some reason don't like setting windmills, which is easy in my opinion.


    make a small compact setup and it will be better and cheaper than solar. Then you make your base at sky to avoid eu loss due distance, or use EV + Special cables (detector/splitter)
    if your base is too high, use 2 magnetizer to go up (+2 batbox + 2 solarpanel), easy and cheap way to go up