Nuclear or solar?

Quote from CrafterOfMines57

I would say that reactors are meant for short, medium, and long term use, however solars are meant for very long term use.

for "very long" you'll need wind, as you'll need lots of EU for a bigger base and solars are just inefficient in terms of space.
you also have to consider that reactors don't just produce a lot of EU/t, but also a lot of EU per cell in total. if your not wasting EU by letting it run while your storage is full or you're producing UU-matter permantly it takes some time to drain all of your available uranium and if you're producing UU-matter as common resource solars won't cut it anyway

Quote from CrafterOfMines57

I would say that reactors are meant for short, medium, and long term use, however solars are meant for very long term use. What I mean by this is that if given an infinite/very long amount of time, the reactors would eventually reach a point (unless you are using Mystcraft) where there was no uranium left in the world (along with the general semi-scarcity of uranium as is), and at that point the solars would have overtaken the reactors in total eu generated. Plus at the cost of a lot less energy, but less resources you get a no maintenance generator that you can just put down and never worry about again, so overall I would say that while reactors are better overall, for these reasons people are more inclined to create solars and use them as a power source instead.

Yea... here's the thing.

1) How long will it take you to actually exhaust all your uranium in your world?

2) You'll have to run your solar panels TEN TIMES AS LONG to match it.

The question is... are you really going to be running a server/game that long?

Quote from ShneekeyTheLost

Yea... here's the thing.

1) How long will it take you to actually exhaust all your uranium in your world?

2) You'll have to run your solar panels TEN TIMES AS LONG to match it.

The question is... are you really going to be running a server/game that long?

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Well it looks like it's time to build A SUPERMASSIVE FRAME QUARRY!

In all seriousness
1. A crapton of time
2. Yes
3. I'll probably be on my deathbed before I can run a game for that long

what happened to the 39 long 3x solar panel farms, at 117 EU/t during the day, everyday its actually not that bad for solar panels. Planned on eventually making 2 of them on either side of my house embedded in the ground.

If by some miracle you manage to hire everyone on a very large sever to man coalgens, then you will have a very powerful and cheap setup that will never run out of fuel. Or you could use Forestry, BC, and RP to make a coal fired plant.

here's another 2c to ponder...

I too used to use solar for my early game power, back when it used cables not circuits to build. Then, it was easily the best option in terms of automatic power generation - no furnace stoking, uranium mining, nothing but free power.
That all changed when solar plants upped the resource cost.

Some pros and cons of the Big 4:
Coal/Charcoal
Pros: A basic fuelburner is the cheapest EU generator you can build; fuel is plentiful (and in the case of charcoal renewable)
Cons: very low EU production
Geothermal
Pros: Low resource cost to build, high fuel/EU ratio, fuel is readily available, good source of mobile power
Cons: fuel can be difficult to source at the very beginning, limited EU generation
Solar
Pros: Automatic generation, infinite fuel
Cons: very low individual EU generation, must be visible to surface (and thus visible to other players)
Nuclear
Pros: high output, EU per fuel unit ratio is massive
Cons: extremely expensive to build, difficult to move, potentially incredibly destructive

I tend to build in that order; starting with coalburners til I can find a decent lava source (ie til I build a portal, or find a nearby lake), then using geos almost exclusively for mobile mining operations and remote recharge stations. My workshop/processing I run from geo until I can craft enough solar - I find that for a basic workshop of 2-3 macerators/recycler/compressor/electric furnace that approximately 12 or 14 solar panels feeding a pair of MFU's is quite sufficient. This generally lasts me until such time as I can craft a Nuclear plant, which I then use (for the most part) as a stand-alone power source for Mass Fabricators. I also run a circuit that allows me to use my nuclear plant to automatically top up my workshop power capacity.

We will gloss over my intense desire for the old, stackable IC coal/biofuel system to return - refillable fuel cans just render the whole process a waste of time and energy

Hope someone finds this useful

Water mill towers aren't *bad*, although you do need them in bulk to do any good. Fortunately, you get two for the price of a generator. Overall cheaper per 1Eu/tic produced than Solar, but tends to be very large constructions and may require some wiring tricks to prevent energy loss through cabling.

There used to be a trick involving RP2 which would auto-load water buckets for 2 Eu/tic, but that got nerfed to 1 Eu/tic per each, and can be rather annoying with the timer ticking and all. Still, constant 10 Eu/tic isn't too difficult to do (takes up 5 generators and some lumber to make 10 water mills) some tubing, a Relay, a Retriever (and thus also at least one form of RP2 bluetric power and probably also a bluetric battery to keep it going) and a Transposer to fill said buckets.

If you have Thermal Expansion, then once you get to the Nether, your lava problems are over. The Magma Crucible produces Lava from Netherrack, which you can then use to pump directly into geothermal plants. In fact, I have a design for running nine geothermal plants off of one, for a total output of 180 Eu/tic, and running off of netherrack. That should more than suffice for all of your modest energy output needs for quite some time.

If you got the resources go for solar. If not, then you probably don't have the resources for nuclear either. In that case, if you got Forestry, or can get it, make a few farms and use the excess materials to burn in good old generators. Once you got a wheat farm, peat farm, and tree farm you will be rolling in EU so to speak.

Solar panels are nice for backup, but if you don't have compact solars addon (I don't for added difficulty and unsure realism (by unsure realism I mean I'm not sure if it actually is more realistic or not) so if you have an MFE and a chunkloader of some sort from railcraft, steve's carts (not recommended if you are only going to use it for chunk loading) or chickenchunks, it can be very good. You probably won't even be awake at night.

Nuclear energy is good for instantaneous energy, plus they can be very fun to work with, unlike solar panels. You do have to constantly mine for uranium though. If you have gregtech, you can get thorium and plutonium cells which add variety to your reactor components (thorium cells output heat and EU 5* slower lasting 5* longer, plutonium cells output twice as much heat and Eu per tick and have twice as much of that in a cell making it produce 4* more heat and EU per cell compared to uranium)

It's preference really.

Windmill farms, if you have the space, can be MUCH better than solar farms, although it doesn't meet the fun and instantaneous factor of nuclear reactors.

Usually, I tend to go from generator to reactor. Once you have a breeder there is no shortage of uranium whatsoever

For me, it is very situational. It mainly depends on the mods at my disposal. If I have thermal expansion, I completely skip building a generator (operating in the world) because a pulverizer can make coal dust. If I have compact solars or advanced solars, then I primarily focus on solar with geothermal backing up uu-matter production until I have sufficient solars. If additional buildcraft pipes are avilable or a combination of railcraft and mystcraft, I pump the neather dry until I have massive multi-chuk solar farms. I tend to avoid Nuclear options because they are extreamvly resource intensive early on

Water towers do have a couple of advantages over wind and solar. Primarily 1) cheap, and 2) they can go anywhere, including down at y10.

Solar requires seeing the open sky, Wind requires being out in the open, and do better the higher you go (thus you can make more compact towers the higher you go for more windmills per chunk). Water... doesn't. Sure, they don't produce much in passive mode, but you get thirty or so of them together, and it amounts to enough to run your Advanced Machines on with enough left to keep your Lappack full. Okay, so it won't run a massfab at any speed, for that you'll need geothermal, but for running your base's energy grid... quite sufficient.

My path is

CoalGen --> WaterGen (+ GeoGen supplement) --> Full GeoGen --> NUKE MODE ENGAGE

Generator ---> Geothermal Generator --> Some solars --> More geogens --> Small nuclear --> More geogens (and start nether mining for Thermal Expansion magma crucible feedstock) -->
create dedicated geogen factory --> More nuclear and start breeder (and 64x64 sweeping frame quarry for reactor fuel and cooling feedstock) --> ???? ---> a lot of EU/t

Still in the stage of starting a small nuclear....

Quote from Thepowdertoy +Bleach

Generator ---> Geothermal Generator

Or skip generator. At least, use TE + Hobbyist steam engines for the beggining, it's cheaper.