WIP Power Plant

Well under inspiration from DanielPSp from this thread I have decided to build my own power plant. Due to my current internet state (satilite internet) I can't do SMP, so this is SSP. Also I would like to point out that I have used NEI's (aka TMI except better) as if I were to do this legitly it would take forever, and I didn't want to spend that much time doing it. I have also used WorldEdit for large walls and clearing areas.

Alright now that's done with we get to the pictures...

All of the pictures are here, I organized them in somewhat of a logical order.

Let me know what you think, currently my plans are...

1. Make a cactus farm and use the cactus in fermentors, and produce biofuel, which can either be used in BC engines, or in a biogenerator for more power.
2. Make a lava gen bank, preferably storing lava in tanks, extracted by buckets so no tin is consumed.
3. Make a regular gen bank, running on whatever you feed it
4. Forestry farms of all kinds
5. Auto warehouse for storing everything
6. Cobblestone generator
7. Auto factory for processing anything
8. Finish Control room
9. Finish entire building
10. Build a town around it, with energy meters, and ability to ship fuel to houses via railcraft or pipes

That list is in no particular order necessarily.

Any ideas/designs you want to share, feel free. Any critic would be appreciated.

Oh, the display for reactors works like this...

Green = Producing power
Yellow = Shut off, but ready to run
Red = Not running, needs refilled

Have fun guys

Quote from yori07

What do you plan on using for the auto-warehouse, RP2 or Logistics Pipes?

Really looking forward to seeing how this works out. Specifically the energy meter part, as well as the shipping part (as either a rail or pipe system would get really complicated to use, and more complicated to implement). On the implement part, I think BC is eventually going to have that covered...

The warehouse will probably be logistics pipe when it goes to 3.x.x branch for BC. As for auto factory, probably the smarter RP tubes, makes factories so much easier, though they are not CPU friendly. My computer can handle it fine, but I'm thinking of when I distribute this world. The energy meter I already have an idea on, as in the next release storage blocks (Batbox, MFE, MFSU) will all emit redstone when they are full, rather than have redstone input. Gimme a few minutes and I'll see if I can get a screenshot of my idea...

The rail and/or pipe system will be very complicated, but what I imagine for that is every house is given a unique identifier based on its location, represented in binary, where every bit is a different level of intersections, if that bit is 0 (off) then go one way, if it's 1 (on) then go the other way. Yeah, I saw the preview for 3.1.0, looks awesome! Oh, I'm also running Railcraft, so that will help...

Quote from _Tim_

That is awesome, sure makes my attempts look pathetic.

I really should look into this redpower thing ..

I wouldn't want to even attempt this without RedPower, you can see all of the wiring it took to make the display and shutoff happen...
Thanks, and I'll bet if you looked into RP, then you could make your attempts a lot better.

Quote from yori07

This I want to see. I've always built (more or less) BC-only factories, and the one result I found that had actual crafting was EPIC (though quite complicated).

Yeah, they take alot of work, but well worth it imo. I've just built a hidden cactus farm, atm it just empties into lava to prevent overflow, but its one more thing off of the list.

As for the energy meter, I made a working prototype, it uses v1.45 (Beta) because in that version, storage blocks emit redstone when full. Here are the pics, the logic is described in the descriptions...
Click here to see energy meter pictures

EDIT: Alright got some pics of the cactus farm, I'm trying out a new layout, tell me what you think.
Cactus farm is the last 4 pictures

Yeah, I'm working on that problem :3

Well this system seems to be working much better, all the new pics are last. Did some major wiring for the battery status display, along with a revamp of the cactus auto collection system to decrease waste on destroyed cactus, tell me what you think this time MrJohnnZ...

Click here to see pics, newest pics are last.

Quote from yori07

Oh god. Those wires. Those pipes. THE HORROR!

At the pipes, at the very least. I use the Foresty Cactus harvester. Used to do the same thing as the pipes, except just for cactus dropped withing a 10x10x? area (height is not mentioned on the wiki), but since it has changed to an actual harvester, I'm reconsidering using it...

Maybe use a water current so that all the cactus is collected at one or two points? It's a personal choice. I prefer to use as few pipe as possible if I can.

Quite frankly BC pipes are very CPU efficient, what is kinda lagging my computer down is when i stand close to the logic gates, I don't have the best GPU, and it would seem all that wire and logic gates are render hogs...

Quote from MrJohnnZ

As long as it works and your getting 100% of the cati, is it going into generators there?

Looks great, if it works...

No it is not 100%, I'm curious if any 100% farms exist that are this compact and large. In the end it will be distributed to chests from where it will either get cooked into cactus greens, and crafted into waterproof for BC pipes, and all the rest will be sent to be processed into biofuel which will be stored, and then when you want extra power, burnt in biogenerators or used in combustion engines.

Anyway, yes this system gets most of it, idk exactly how much, but considering the size of this farm, its pretty good.

Quote from FnordMan

Well there is a way but it involves copious amounts of obsidian pipes from BC. Not quite that compact but it is quite scalable.
only has one collection point to boot, water does the rest.
don't have any pics as I haven't built one in my current world yet but I can post them later when I get around to it.

Is it like what I did with water, just with obby pipes?

I look forward to seeing this....

Quote from pizzadudecook

Already talked about it in Daniel's thread, but computercraft would be epic with your power plant. Run everything from one console and tada!

Hmm, I took a look at that mod a week or two ago, didn't know it was that powerful. When I get some time (havn't even touched MC for past 3 days) then I will defiantly look into it.