HV is useless!

  • Previously, in IC(1) HV was used to reduce the number of times the distance loss was applied to transmitted power by compacting it into packets, however the new wiring system has changed this, and it has made HV useless!


    Lets imagine you have a power generation area 100 blocks from where you need power. To make the power line out of HV4x, we would need about 25 pieces of refiron, as well as 300 rubber! To make it out of glass fiber cable, we would need 5 diamonds, and some readily available glass and redstone. This doesn't look too good for our power line...


    But what about energy loss? Well it seems that the HV cable would lose 80 eu/t. Thats the equivalent of 80 solar panels. Absurd! It looks like using HV cable (ironically) won't be good for transmitting our power via HV.
    How about glass? Well that would lose only 5 eu/t (wiki says .05, while Al's post says .025, I followed the wiki). Thats reasonable, though it would require 5 precious diamonds.


    So it seems niether HV capable wiring is great. HV4x itself is miserably expensive, as well as being horrible at conducting energy, so it's use is pretty much limited to very short distance transfers between MFS units and such. As for glass, its not too bad, but the usage of precious diamonds for it is quite a deterrent for non-mega-rich players.


    So in conclusion, HV will either be horribly horribly expensive, or horribly horribly wasteful, and it would just be a better idea to move your power station closer!


    Does anyone else find this wrong? Central power should not be a thing of the past, but it seems it simply isn't possible. What's the point of cables if we can't use them for more than a few blocks length?

  • you are thinking about 80 solar panel loss when you send a constant 2000 EU/t , but if you think about something like 100 solar panel, your loss is only around 4% , or around 4 solars out of 100 solar panel transmission. Still, i miss the old HV due to my HV ring design.

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

  • you are thinking about 80 solar panel loss when you send a constant 2000 EU/t , but if you think about something like 100 solar panel, your loss is only around 4% , or around 4 solars out of 100 solar panel transmission. Still, i miss the old HV due to my HV ring design.


    Ah, true, I always seem to overlook that.


    It still isn't great though, as we are limited at the MAX to 2048, and only 512 if we use the much more reasonable glass.


    The old system was 1 eu per 3 blocks, while the HV4x is only 1.25. We are only getting 46% of the old power ability now.

  • It still is the most efficient way of transferring power over long distances without putting up a line of batboxes with 4 pieces of copper cable in between them.


    And yes, you lose 0.8 EU/block with a 3x insulated HV cable, but that's 0.04% loss per tile. If you, say, take a normal batbox output (32 EU/s), and transform it up to Extreme Voltage (2048 EU/s), and send it 100 blocks, then transform it down, the output will be 30 EU (30.72 rounded down). That's a negligible loss.


    Also, it's funny how you say 25 refined iron ingots(1 iron per 4 tiles, enough for 100 tiles) is a lot compared to 6.25 diamonds (1 diamond per 16 tiles), when 25 ingots = 12.5 ore, and I personally have a much easier time finding 13 iron ore than 7 diamonds, but that's just me.

  • It still is the most efficient way of transferring power over long distances without putting up a line of batboxes with 4 pieces of copper cable in between them.


    And yes, you lose 0.8 EU/block with a 3x insulated HV cable, but that's 0.04% loss per tile. If you, say, take a normal batbox output (32 EU/s), and transform it up to Extreme Voltage (2048 EU/s), and send it 100 blocks, then transform it down, the output will be 30 EU (30.72 rounded down). That's a negligible loss.


    Also, it's funny how you say 25 refined iron ingots(1 iron per 4 tiles, enough for 100 tiles) is a lot compared to 6.25 diamonds (1 diamond per 16 tiles), when 25 ingots = 12.5 ore, and I personally have a much easier time finding 13 iron ore than 7 diamonds, but that's just me.


    You forget the 300 rubber.

  • You forget the 300 rubber.

    That's because I never have a problem acquiring it. A 1-hour trip around my base netted me what you see in the picture. And I didn't even plant any saplings yet. Now, I was rather lucky to stumble upon a large chunk of rubber trees, but if you plan on making HV lines over 100 blocks long, chances are you are more than able to explore the area around your base a bit.

  • I have planted about a dozen rubber trees near my base and a 15 min resin run will net me about three stacks of rubber. So for me rubber is more about whether I can be bothered to go harvest it or not. =P



    On the other hand, my Induction Furnace is causing me transmission problems. My system is highly efficient when transferring large amounts of power long distances, but system is sending packets 1 EU/t at a time with massive losses per packet. I have a total of 45 EU/t generating capacity, but the MFEs at the generating stations never fill because of the stupid furnace. I'm hoping 1.0 fixes the issue.

  • I think, the glass fiber cable is overpowered. A am VERY like the new wiring system, but... There are glass fiber, and it makes all the other wires useless. Yes, it is expensive, but not goddamn expensive. 1 diamond - 16 cables... well. Yes, they are useful for crystals and so on, but now we have an awesome miner, which is requiring only 3 diamonds (comparing to IC1 - miner need 16 diamonds for the stack of diamond pipes), and it can mine some new diamonds!. And there are some ways to make diamonds - mass fabricator, industrial diamonds (AFAIK they will be included).
    And what the hell, how could you transfer the ELECTRIC ENERGY with the optic fiber cable?

    Cutiemark crusaders - engineers, Yay!
    Blown up: Industrial Blast Furnace, Industrial Wiremill, Singularity compressor, Extractor.

  • And what the hell, how could you transfer the ELECTRIC ENERGY with the optic fiber cable?


    This bothers me very much. =P


    At the very least if you are using high powered laser transmission you should have to have special blocks at each end of the line to convert the energy from electricity to light and back.

  • Lazers and high efficiency solar panels
    and yes it may seem OP but consider it a reward for getting enough spare diamonds to spend on diamonds
    and if yo are going to bother making MV transformers then you are probably going to transmit much further than 16 blocks
    and yes it does seem horribly in effeicent but we keep forgetting the HV storadge and sudden pulse action...
    personally I will have A localized power or B just use MV and glass fibers

  • Lazers and high efficiency solar panels
    and yes it may seem OP but consider it a reward for getting enough spare diamonds to spend on diamonds
    and if yo are going to bother making MV transformers then you are probably going to transmit much further than 16 blocks
    and yes it does seem horribly in effeicent but we keep forgetting the HV storadge and sudden pulse action...
    personally I will have A localized power or B just use MV and glass fibers

    I think bottlenecking is the main problem with other types of transmission. Especially when powering transporters or mass fabricators. However this whole chunk loading business is something thats screwing with my plans for large scale power networks. (essentially a grid with multiple up and downloading points). Anyone know a way around this aside from using MFSUs all over the place? (which would introduce a new bottleneck....)

  • I think bottlenecking is the main problem with other types of transmission. Especially when powering transporters or mass fabricators. However this whole chunk loading business is something thats screwing with my plans for large scale power networks. (essentially a grid with multiple up and downloading points). Anyone know a way around this aside from using MFSUs all over the place? (which would introduce a new bottleneck....)

    The only thing that I can say is build vertical, not horizontal.
    Its not all that great, but if you have a 63 deep minable area, you can have 31 walkable levels, multiply that by 81(9 by 9 chunk area right?), its still far more than enough.
    Either way, MSFUs are still somewhat realistic if you consider transformer substations in real life.
    Its not too bad, especially if you are willing to build a small solar plant by every MSFu to power it in absence of your main power plant.

  • The only thing that I can say is build vertical, not horizontal.
    Its not all that great, but if you have a 63 deep minable area, you can have 31 walkable levels, multiply that by 81(9 by 9 chunk area right?), its still far more than enough.
    Either way, MSFUs are still somewhat realistic if you consider transformer substations in real life.
    Its not too bad, especially if you are willing to build a small solar plant by every MSFu to power it in absence of your main power plant.

    I'm more of an outdoorsey type :). The idea to supplement the grid with small sub-plants is pretty good. I suppose these problems are not going to be as huge on SMP due to more chunks being loaded...

  • also dont forget that you can create most resources through the mass fab 9 UUM gets you 1 diamond tho it takes around 1mil eu per UUM but setting up about 50 solar panels will get you the energy to make them in about 8 cycles and you can always make more solar panels to increase the speed

  • I think bottlenecking is the main problem with other types of transmission. Especially when powering transporters or mass fabricators. However this whole chunk loading business is something thats screwing with my plans for large scale power networks. (essentially a grid with multiple up and downloading points). Anyone know a way around this aside from using MFSUs all over the place? (which would introduce a new bottleneck....)

    How about something like this, at each central station you are producing a high amount of EU (depending on your energy uses and needs) powering up two MFSUs, down convert that to MV to feed 4 MFE's each, then combine those eight to one line and step it back up to HV and just run glass as power lines, at any intersection you put BELOW your Line a down convert back to MV to power a MFE to use as a powersupply, you could even have multiples it that sight needed a large storage for some reason. once you get to a point where you want to stop incurring loss convert to MV feed another 8 MFE and then combine step up and retransmit. You could also add multiple Central power stations and satalite stations with ease and add them to the grid.


    Thanks to all the power coming from different locations (8 MFE's) it will not pop the line and the recharge of your transformers will be quite fast (1024-loss) and keeps getting faster the more power stations you add.


    I made a small mark up of this on my one of my test maps


    http://www.freeimagehosting.net/d84bc
    http://www.freeimagehosting.net/76eee
    http://www.freeimagehosting.net/10b73

  • Here's some math. If you use an insulated copper cable with 32 EU/t going through it, every five blocks you lose 1 EU, 32*5=160 blocks before the energy runs out. So in most situations, copper cable and batboxes are the way to go if you are powering a single room with a solar flower, which is how most people start out.
    Summary: Low cost cables useful for a single home during the first 1-9 hours of gameplay


    2x insulated gold cable with 128 EU/t going through it, 1 EU every 2.5 blocks, 128*2.5=320 blocks, so twice the distance. This is useful for powering a large home with a relatively small power source or using a large power source to power an average home.
    Summary: Use for gold other than railways that can power a relatively large home that you'll acquire after 10 hours total of gameplay.


    Glass fibre cable with 512 EU/t going through it, 1 EU every 20 blocks, 512*20=10240 blocks!!!!!!! Useful if you are obsessive over energy loss and are willing to spend diamonds or 64 coal(Or 512 cobblestone with EQ EX) for it, if you have to transfer energy from an island out in an ocean to the continent, or if you want to be REALLY safe with your reactor and have it thousands of blocks away.
    Summary: Very high cost for EXTREME distance energy transfer or extremely low energy loss wiring.


    4x insulated HV cable with 2048 EU/t going through it, 1 EU every 1.25 blocks, 2048*1.25=2560 blocks. Useful if you have multiple reactors powering one cable, or if you want a single reactor far away. Also useful as a tesla coil that only costs iron and rubber(I'm assuming shocks from wires also happen to animals). Also useful as a way to quickly power Mass Fabricators and other high EU cost machines.
    Summary: Uses the heavily used refined iron for large distance energy transfer at high loss, and for supplying a large amount of power to an energy hungry system.


    Give me other uses and I'll edit them in. This is all I could think of at 11 PM.