http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fez3O3NP72s
Take a look. It's very simple, and straightforward. Hope you guys like it.
Automatic Active Water Mills with Redpower 2
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I enjoyed the video - I'll have to try it sometime!
It will become easier when Blutricity becomes portable in some way - right now it requires RP solar power, which begs the question "why not just drop a couple IC solars there and be done with it?"
But I'd imagine that the energy output one can get from 2-16 "manned" water mills is beyond that of a few solars. -
Yay! Nice thing, and nice alternative for that boring solars... And it is cheaper. I designed a similar system with a tank from BC and geogens, but i used a sorting machine to distribute buckets evenly between all the geogens.
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And it is cheaper.
Debatable, unless you're ignoring the cost of all the RedPower equipment. -
Um... Yes, i've ignored that... But it uses much less iron and rubber than solar panels.
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nice. a lot more compact than the system I bodged together once.
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Debatable, unless you're ignoring the cost of all the RedPower equipment.Still probably cheaper. That redpower equipment can keep roughly 50 of these active.
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Well, setting up the watermill farm does technically require 2 diamonds for the handsaw to cut the silicon boule to make the blue doped wafers for blutricity, but then again you can also keep using that handsaw, so I don't know if that really counts.
Definitely a nice system though, and now that blutricity is somewhat portable because of batteries, a good way to get power underground without having to move pumps around.
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Well, setting up the watermill farm does technically require 2 diamonds for the handsaw to cut the silicon boule to make the blue doped wafers for blutricity, but then again you can also keep using that handsaw, so I don't know if that really counts.
Definitely a nice system though, and now that blutricity is somewhat portable because of batteries, a good way to get power underground without having to move pumps around.
It's possible to do this with advanced wooden pipes instead of retrievers and filters, meaning you can do it without diamonds, but only with AdditionalPipes and BuildCraft. -
I currently use this in my power plant with 20 water mills. It works like a champ. The only thing I had a problem with was I tried to have buckets come out of the filter and then drop down one block into the water mills. After moving evertything around to have the pipes all on one level it worked great. No real wory about looks as it's like the redheaded stepchild of my powerplant. Just slap it and close the door.
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It's possible to do this with advanced wooden pipes instead of retrievers and filters, meaning you can do it without diamonds, but only with AdditionalPipes and BuildCraft.I don't think you can insert AND remove from the same block face with adv wood pipes. Not sure.
Also a note to everyone. The upcoming release of RP2 will ahve that cool thermopile that eloraam tweeted about. This will mean under ground completely. No more need for solars. One thermopile properly set up is far more than enough energy to power this entire system.
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I don't think you can insert AND remove from the same block face with adv wood pipes. Not sure.
Advanced wooden pipes ignore block faces. You can extract empty buckets from any face, provided you set the filter to empty buckets. -
The upcoming release of RP2 will ahve that cool thermopile that eloraam tweeted about. This will mean under ground completely. No more need for solars. One thermopile properly set up is far more than enough energy to power this entire system.
According to your videos, it takes 4 thermopiles to produce as much power as a single RP solar panel. Is that enough to run the 3 machines? -
the three solar panels in my tutorial is WAY overkill. I've learned a lot about redpower recently. It takes 25W to push one item. All current redpower machines are 100V. Each solar is 2 Amps. That means you're pushing 6 amps with those three solars. That's 600 Watts per TICK. 12000Watts per second. We only need 50W per second, because our timer is 0.500s. One thermopile gives 0.5A per tick which is 50W per tick 1000W per second. We need 50W per second. We have far far more than that with one thermopile.
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Advanced wooden pipes ignore block faces. You can extract empty buckets from any face, provided you set the filter to empty buckets.I know that you can do that. Can you extract AND insert through the same face? Because the Bottom slot for the windmil is where you have to do it. Otherwise the bucket will just end up on top.
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It takes 25W to push one item. All current redpower machines are 100V. Each solar is 2 Amps. That means you're pushing 6 amps with those three solars. That's 600 Watts per TICK. 12000Watts per second. We only need 50W per second, because our timer is 0.500s. One thermopile gives 0.5A per tick which is 50W per tick 1000W per second. We need 50W per second. We have far far more than that with one thermopile.
Wow. Thanks for elaborating on that! I do understand the electrical math; I just don't usually pause to think about it very often. When someone lays it all out for me, it becomes very clear.
I've always tended to overdo it on solar panels because I want my battery box to charge up quickly. I prefer to have a good reserve in case of unforeseen problems.But I really like the design of your horizontal thermopile array - it's an elegant means to provide 4 blocks of water to each thermopile to perfectly offset the heat production of the lava source. And it's very easy to implement, even underground!
Something that just occurred to me... reviewing your vertical thermopile array, it's clear that the water needn't be a source block. I don't think there's any risk of evaporation in your horizontal array, but if there is, couldn't the water be provided from sources either adjacent or above (depending on the location)?
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Wow. Thanks for elaborating on that! I do understand the electrical math; I just don't usually pause to think about it very often. When someone lays it all out for me, it becomes very clear.
I've always tended to overdo it on solar panels because I want my battery box to charge up quickly. I prefer to have a good reserve in case of unforeseen problems.But I really like the design of your horizontal thermopile array - it's an elegant means to provide 4 blocks of water to each thermopile to perfectly offset the heat production of the lava source. And it's very easy to implement, even underground!
Something that just occurred to me... reviewing your vertical thermopile array, it's clear that the water needn't be a source block. I don't think there's any risk of evaporation in your horizontal array, but if there is, couldn't the water be provided from sources either adjacent or above (depending on the location)?
Yeah. I've actually made a cool fountain looking design that takes advantage of this.
There are 4 thermopiles, 1 lava block in the center, and the wiring is beneith.
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I'd like to see more of that layout... it's possible to make your power generation system into an attractive decorative water feature in a house!
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Sorry for being pedantic, but a watt is a unit of power, like eu/t, and a joule is a unit of energy, like eu. (And a coulomb is an amp times a second)
the three solar panels in my tutorial is WAY overkill. I've learned a lot about redpower recently. It takes 25J to push one item. All current redpower machines are 100V. Each solar is 2 Amps. That means you're pushing 6 amps with those three solars. That's 600 Joules per TICK. 12000Watts
per second. We only need 50Wper second, because our timer is 0.500s. One thermopile gives 0.5 C per tick which is 50J per tick 1000Wper second. We need 50Wper second. We have far far more than that with one thermopile.Actually, an amp is a coulomb per second, not per tick (although I don't know how RP works internally, it might well be C/t instead of A). If that's right then the above math is wrong.
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Sorry for being pedantic, but a watt is a unit of power, like eu/t, and a joule is a unit of energy, like eu. (And a coulomb is an amp times a second)
Actually, an amp is a coulomb per second, not per tick (although I don't know how RP works internally, it might well be C/t instead of A). If that's right then the above math is wrong.
Allow me to fix your fix.
the three solar panels in my tutorial is WAY overkill. I've learned a lot about redpower recently. It takes 25Wt to push one item. All current redpower machines are 100V. Each solar produces 2 amps. That means you're pushing 6 amps with those three solars. That means it outputs 600W. You can get 12000Ws out of this. We only need 50Ws, because our timer is 0.500s. One thermopile gives 0.5 amps which can give you 50W. This means you can get 1000Ws out of it. We need 50Wt total in a full second of time. We have far far more than that with one thermopile.
I've been over it with the author more than once. AFAIK RP2 power is measured in ticks. Since real life isn't measured in ticks, it's difficult to make EXACT translations, but in the terms of minecraft this math is right.
