Anything in unloaded chunks behaves as if it wasn't there.
Using such a line of storages should work, the last loaded one will get charged. Once another MFE+its wiring is loaded it'll get charged from the MFE before.
Chunks will get loaded only if somebody is in "sight" range which is about 160 blocks.
No, you are everytime within a grid of nine by nine chunks with 16 by 16 blocks each, this means the maximum distance is (4+1+1) * 16 - 2 blocks, therefore 94 blocks.
144x144 blocks are loaded at once 
It is indeed 144 x 144 blocks around you, 9 chunks into each direction (10x10), that are being kept "active" but I was also told by a skilled programmer that in SSP, chunks will not get unloaded once you've been in them, can't confirm the latter though.
It is indeed 144 x 144 blocks around you, 9 chunks into each direction (10x10), that are being kept "active" but I was also told by a skilled programmer that in SSP, chunks will not get unloaded once you've been in them, can't confirm the latter though.
There might be some buffer, but if chunks didn't unload you'd run out of RAM if you went trekking 
I remember a Minecraft mod that disables chunk loading so when Minecraft starts up, all the chucks will be loaded. I forgot what it's called.
I just made a 360-block power line and placed an MFU at the end. Everything worked fine.
Then I re-launched minecraft and loaded the same world - MFU was still charging without me returning to the power source (it got loaded).
Not sure if the line was not long enough or it has something to do with powered rail track/redstone circuits around the whole power line.
We should really run tests how far you can go with cables until you hit chunk-loading problems. I'll check it out this evening.
Some time ago i used plugins for bukkit to get our few km long transmission line working, which worked well.
I just had to increase the java VM stack as the defalut value was causing a stack overflow from the recursion of method
calcCurrent or similar. i set there 32MB and it was ok. However, the server has thrown an unknown exception few times
without any trace(!) but i had no idea what caused it, whether that were bukkit plugins or the IC itself..
It would all work fine if the IC was made as a seperate part of the game, calculating events privately not using the chunk updates
except for changes you make to the wiring. Just an idea, i don't know much about the MC structure so i can't tell how difficult
it would be, but if i could get my hands on the IC source code, i could try implementing my idea..
This buildcraft mod: http://www.minecraftforum.net/…t-pipes-11-two-new-pipes/ has a chunk loader so that the chunk that contains a teleport pipe and the 4 connnecting chunks are always loaded. You could abuse that even if they are a bit expensive.
