Solar panel wiring

1st Official Post

    Has anybody figured out how to wire solar panels in IC2? the way I figure it we will have to do flowers of 5 solar panels since I cant find switch cables, But I have tried all 3 types of wires (copper/gold/fiber) to hook up the flowers to a MFE/MFSU and there is no energy flow into the storage blocks, can anybody help out?



    Edit: was using HV cables instead of glass fiber cables, the fiber cables work for it. but will there be a switch cable eventually added? that way we can make bigger solar panels?


    Edit2: My MFE keeps blowing up for some reason, any ideas?

    • Official Post

    1. Ensure the distance isn't too big. 3-4 cables for copper, less for others, except for glass fibre (which can lead along 19 blocks without loss)
    2. Don't wire into the output (brown spot) side of a MFE/BatBox.
    3. You can freely use a cable instead of the switch cable, the current will always travel to a valid energy consumant/storage, if in reach.
    4. Currently only flows if it actually reaches the storage block. If it would nullify due to distance based loss, it wont send, at all.

    Quote from Alblaka

    1. Ensure the distance isn't too big. 3-4 cables for copper, less for others, except for glass fibre (which can lead along 19 blocks without loss)
    2. Don't wire into the output (brown spot) side of a MFE/BatBox.
    3. You can freely use a cable instead of the switch cable, the current will always travel to a valid energy consumant/storage, if in reach.
    4. Currently only flows if it actually reaches the storage block. If it would nullify due to distance based loss, it wont send, at all.

    Thanks, But why do MFE's explode? Mine keeps going "BOOM" :(

    • Official Post
    Quote from Dethier

    Thanks, But why do MFE's explode? Mine keeps going "BOOM" :(


    Do you input more than 128 eu/t into it? (or you mean batbox and wire more than 32 eu/t in?)


    Solar wiring: Up till now the best working version i use is: make a batbox, 1 copper cable on the 4 sides and 1 up. Attach 1 solar to each place acessible around those 5 cables, should you get 13 solars / batbox. Then wrench the output of the box downward and extract the energy, so you have a minimal loss while the energy is sent in 1eu packages, the Batbox will emit 32eu packs and thus wastly reducing the range loss. Cheap and working.

    Quote from Alblaka

    If MFE's explode, your supplying them with T3 or HV voltage. Do not feed MFE's more then 128EUt.

    I think for some reason the MFSU was feeding power to the MFE, the faces of the MFE/MFSU's with the dot/symbols are the outputs now? not the top/bottom side?

    Considering batboxes are pretty cheap to make (6 tin ore, 6 redstone, 4 copper cable), and considering the new energy algorithms, it is easily possible to create huge solar flowers with zero energy loss. Using only one batbox and 17 cable pieces, a single solar flower can house a whopping 49 solar panels. In fact, this array is way too much for the poor batbox to handle, it overflows very easily, so trimming this down is in order. Here is a picture of a trimmed down array. Adding a single cable piece and putting 4 more panels on each end will add an additional 16 EU/t, and adding a singular solar panel on the top will give a grand total of 49. Although this can only be handled by MFE's/MFSU's.


    Quote from Gorni

    copper: up to 32/package
    gold: up to 128
    Glass Fiber: up to 512
    Iron: up to 2048

    So I would need copper/gold cables to put current into machines? (except the mass fabricator ofc)
    and the cables would need to be hooked up to a bat box? because the MFE current keeps blowing up my machines lol

    Here is no-energy loss distance for each cables:


    Glass Fiber : 16
    Copper Cable : 3 (4 with 1 insulation)
    Gold Cable: 1 (1 with 1 insulation, 2 with 2 insulation)
    HV cable : 0 (1 with 1 insulation , 0 with 2 insulation, 1 with 3 insulation)

    Please ignore this floating platform with 10,000 solar panels. Nothing to see here.

    If making a solar flower, making it produce 64 Eu/t would be idea, if using a batbox, so it outputs during the night as well as the day. Although, The capacity may not be able to buffer that output...


    (this assuming that the currents are split into multiple pulses, and hence 64 pulses of 1 Eu should not cause it to explode)


    40,000 Capacity
    32 Eu/t surplus
    1250 ticks to fully charge
    62.5 seconds
    ~1 minute, so would certainly NOT last the whole night, and would hit the capacity during t he day. So I am incorrect, this would not work without a bigger buffer.

    would be simple to just add a couple of extra batboxes. (love the name btw)

    If there is such a thing as Heaven and Hell then I'm royally screwed...

    • Official Post
    Quote from BR41ND34D

    would be simple to just add a couple of extra batboxes. (love the name btw)


    Nope.
    The 1st (from the solar panels direction) batbox will still only emit 32 EUt... the other batboxes wont get the 32 EUt overflow. Unless you put 2 batboxes NEXT to each other, wiring both of them directly. That would work, though without buffering.