Geothermal Power Station

enneract · Dec 5th 2011

Wanted to do something other than solar, saw the Geothermal Mk2 generators included with PowerConverters mod, and thus, this was born. Probably not too impressive, but made completely legit in a new world (old save got lost in reformat).

Has 2 banks of 8 lava tanks, 7 blocks high (soon to expand to 8 blocks). Total energy storage in lava form around 40,000,000EU. The two levers that you see in the back control the flow of lava into the Geothermal Generator Mk2 banks.

Each bank outputs 100 EU/T, buffered through 2 batbox (this will be expanded to 5 BatBox right after I write this post, I just noticed that I'm losing EU with just 2 per bank) just don't feel like redoing the screenshots).

Batbox output is buffered through 4 MFE, which then are routed up to the MFSU above, from which I am going to build out my power system. Yes, right now, the only thing hooked up to this is a single electric furnace, lol.

Underside of flow control interface. I plan on doing some more stuff control-wise, so thus the bundled cable coming off and going nowhere.

I think this design is going to be very expandable, both in lava storage and in EU output. Adding another bank of generators would be trivial (I ran out of diamonds for fiber cables), as would adding more MFSU for energy storage.

My opinion is that this system is possibly even superior to most nuclear designs, as lava is fairly easy to come by and the power output of this system is rather incredible, with zero risk of explosion.

Anyway, any thoughts, suggestions welcome...

NuclearStudent · Dec 12th 2011

Sweet texture pack! And consider building this in the Nether and shipping crystals back.

DarkClown · Dec 22nd 2011

Is the texture pack Sphax´s PureBDCraft?

MagusUnion · Dec 23rd 2011

Quote

My opinion is that this system is possibly even superior to most nuclear designs, as lava is fairly easy to come by and the power output of this system is rather incredible, with zero risk of explosion.

I very much agree with this. It's SO much cheaper to spend Cobblestone on Lava storage than use diamonds for EU storage. Plus, in the event that you have to move said lava/energy around, it's easier to move the lava itself RATHER than experience EU loss via cables and wiring. Lava cells are a god-send, and ever since their inception into Industrialcraft, Geothermal has not only become a practical sense of energy generation, but a highly competitive one. Hell, I don't even bother with Uranium because of the sheer fact that it's cheaper/easier/effective to use geothermal energy over nuclear, and the substance of lava is more abundant than Uranium itself.

But of course, this comes at the heavy reliance of Buildcraft. an "outside mod". Used to, that would limit your playstyle (due to slot ID restrictions), and force you into IC-BC only type play. But thanks to Forge, such restrictions are no longer an issue. In fact, geothermal power has been buffed considerably by add-ons and cross content mods as well. All in all, I don't know why more players aren't using lava instead of other energy means (or if they are, why they aren't sharing the info of such usage to the rest of the community). Yes, on a vIC level, it can be very Tin intensive, but even that can be circumvented thru clever bucket based applications.

The only other form of energy production that comes close to matching Geothermal in terms of safety and production is Electric Wood Gasification. But that addon is a bit out-of-date, and those results can be greatly tampered with if you have agricultural based mods, lol...

immibis · Dec 27th 2011

Quote from MagusUnion

All in all, I don't know why more players aren't using lava instead of other energy means (or if they are, why they aren't sharing the info of such usage to the rest of the community).

I used geothermal (Geothermal Mk 2's, from the power converters mod - they're like normal ones but they accept lava from pipes) to power my base on a server, but it was annoying to find lava for it - uranium is easier to find IMO, because IC2 miners will dig it up like every other ore, but they will not pump lava without extra work (not to mention tin).

It's much better in the Nether. When the admins decided to open the Nether for 24 hours, I had 43 geo mk 2's running a mass fabricator.

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