Forget coal, this is the energy of the fuuuttuuuurreeeee

Quote from Delerium76

Simple solution to destroying overflow:

Wasting resources are ABOMINATION!

Quote from Delerium76

Simple solution to destroying overflow:
T

Hmmm you should make a vaccum pipe/ obsidian pipe 2 blocks under the cobble pipe instead of the lava then fork it into the pipe leading into the generator wiht a iron pipe so nothing is wasted

both of you do realize this was a solution for getting rid of excess cactus produced by automated farms, right? In that context, the farm will always be producing faster than the generator can burn them, so your solutions are to get rid of the excess, or add more generators. Looping it back, or putting it in a chest doesn't solve a thing, or else I would have put that in the design. I was providing a simple quick and easy solution to dealing with excess renewable automatically produced resources. No offense, but both of the above posts just made me think neither of you read the posts that came before mine.

Yeah, with auto cactus farms, you need to get rid of the cactus, not store it. Whether that means burning it, or destroying it, it must be done. Burning is more energy efficient though, but costs more iron and cables and isn't always practical.

Just trying to send cactii to generator, but they appear always in top slot, while pipe incomes from bottom .

And if I block top slot, cactii just drop to ground.

How did you manage to move cactus in bottom slot?

For regular furnace it works ok.

EDIT: nevermind, got it working by putting cactus to side of generator

I'd love to see a good example image of an automatic charcoal making/burning system, that'd be pretty sweet, I wonder how it compares to a cactus farm for energy. Also, why would you EVER route cactus to lava? Route it to an auto-crafting table (we are all using BC right otherwise how are you getting the cactus into the machines to make it worthwhile?) and make plant clumps for biofuel. After all the work to make biofuel, is it even all that energy efficient to do?

@above ThIs! compact your overflowing cactus for 8 x the storage and more energy later!
on auto charcoal making... Yes I have done it and It is possible but you need to always have enough energy for them to run constantly and/or have a reduced automated rate of wood coming in (fixing overflow automatically is really a pain since the buildcraft pipes which arent supposed to connect (obsidan, wood, cobble & stone) do connect for some reason)
and after begining to use Equivalent exchange I find that burning anything in lava a horrendous waste.

Quote from FourFire

@above ThIs! compact your overflowing cactus for 8 x the storage and more energy later!
on auto charcoal making... Yes I have done it and It is possible but you need to always have enough energy for them to run constantly and/or have a reduced automated rate of wood coming in (fixing overflow automatically is really a pain since the buildcraft pipes which arent supposed to connect (obsidan, wood, cobble & stone) do connect for some reason)
and after begining to use Equivalent exchange I find that burning anything in lava a horrendous waste.

For the most part I tweak my automation so that I'm producing a little less than I can fully process instead of burning overflow in lava. I can deal with a little less production if it means my automation doesn't have to deal with overflow. I do that either with timed release with Eloraam's RedPower, or enough processing to keep up with say a cactus farm, or diverting any overflow to my boxes that go to my recycler.

I was not really condoning dropping stuff in lava earlier but that was the topic, so I showed the easiest way to hook up a machine and deal with overflow without using a bunch of extra piping, chests, and space.

Or you just use solarpower

Wow, you mena you can actually power things with Sugarcane and Compressed Plants?
Cactus, is the lowest in burning output.

Hey Guys,
just wanted to post a pic of my cacti farm, which uses 880 cacti.
Its enough to power a generator 24/7 and surplus cacti are sucked in by an BC overflowsystem and are transported into a recycler, thereby producing srap.

Works great for producing UU-Matter

Still working on it now and then to increase scrap production

Oh and concerning the overflow discussion, heres my system:

You need so many gold and obbi pipes to prevent pipes conencting to each other.

Windgenerators seems to be so much better. At the top of the world my windgenerators produce like 3,5 EU/t each. It does vary a bit but it beats watermills (and solars) by far. I made a small windfarm that produce as much as a nuclear reactor. Its the best way to get power in my opinion. Its cheaper and produces more than the others.

Quote from Rick

Windgenerators seems to be so much better. At the top of the world my windgenerators produce like 3,5 EU/t each. It does vary a bit but it beats watermills (and solars) by far. I made a small windfarm that produce as much as a nuclear reactor. Its the best way to get power in my opinion. Its cheaper and produces more than the others.

Can you post a screenshot?

Here is a screenshot of my windgen farm. I have seen it producing almost 80 eu/t at highest. Thats alot of energy for a relative cheap, completely safe and easy to expand farm.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/94/20111017140516.png/

Through its not needed to transform to extreme voltage it will reduce losses by alot but even with high voltage it will produce alot.

Downside is it causes alot of lag when you go to it and move away. Restarting minecraft fixes this until you repeat that.

From now on everyone will only use windgens :).

Solars produce 0,5 eu/t on average
Windgens produce like 2 eu/t on average

Costs a bit more than solars but you get 4x output...

or a nuclear which may be setup underground and safely produce up to 80 EU/t for the same iron cost as 5 solargens
Or watermills; the cavedweller's solar panel

A nuclear reactor is alot more expensive than 5 solars. The reactor itself already cost more than 5 solars not to mention the 6 chambers and components you would need to reach 80 eu/tick without risking it to blow up or having very low eff.

Quote from Rick

A nuclear reactor is alot more expensive than 5 solars. The reactor itself already cost more than 5 solars not to mention the 6 chambers and components you would need to reach 80 eu/tick without risking it to blow up or having very low eff.

low efficiency is irrelevant exactly because of this by the time you get enough resources to make a 40EU/t Mark II reactor using 4 uranium,
you have already got ~16 uranium.
Yes the investment of a nuclear reactor is quite large, but once you get one going safely you will have lots of spare energy at your disposal and you will save tons of iron the near constant 40 EU/t (which is a safe reactor) will cost you around 100 Iron compared to the 600 iron (low estimate) required for the same amount of power produced by solar panels. yes the reactor also costs large amounts of tin and copper as do the components but the fact is that tin and copper are about 4-5 times as common as iron and iron is the most used resource in IC. Eventually you will get ahead of other people using only solar power in the amount of spare resources and therefore machines.
nuclear is a large time and resource investment but it pays off in the long run and as long as it is safe, it doesnt take even a tenth of the sapce required for an equally producing solar array.
but solar does have its benefits, so does wind, geothermal, and water power, let alone the standard generator. This is the exact reason why there is many types of power sources so that we can pick and choose the most advantageous according to our current situation.
in late game tech I will be using more standard generators than any other type of generator so you decide which is best for you and lets not argue about which is best
(yes I have been arguing and I will stop now)