1. Windmills : remove these from the game. Replace them with a wind generator that produces a lot more power, but costs a lot more resources (higher density, like an "HV-windgen"). The block when placed needs a huge amount of clear space, and it has an animated entity drawn on the client that looks like actual windmill blades. (and the animation can be disabled in the config file and replaced with a static sprite)
2. Solar Panels : A recursive algorithm combines all panels that are adjacent into a single entity. It does this upon chunk loading.
Only once upon loading the chunk are things like a clear path to sky checked. Solar panels have a failure rate - several things can go wrong. Their internal circuits can melt down (you'll get a pool of melted rubber on top), they can get dirty, the glass can crack, etc. Solar panels either fail the very moment you install them, or they last for a MINIMUM of 3 real life days. (72 hours). After that they have a chance to fail, calculated just once per tick for the entire group of panels.
The purpose? Eliminate the need for lame things like "HV solar arrays". You can create solar fields - but they will take up many, many chunks of area, and in practice there is a limited number of chunks that a player can load. Note : only if a solar array is actually providing power to something (to charge a battery, etc) does it count against the array's lifespan. The idea here is to not annoy people who are using panels as intended, to power a basic base (since they will never use their panels 72 hours in a row to run a few machines, not without playing for weeks) but to penalize people duping items using solar power.
3. Water Generators - also remove these, replace them with big turbines that must have flowing water going through them.
4. Generators - revamp the path for creating refined fuel to burn in a generator. There should be a path for bulk fuel production that consumes 0 tin.
5. Nuclear Reactors - I propose this earlier, got shot down, but here's a refinement. By macerating huge amounts of uranium ore, you can create purified uranium dust. This can be stamped into ingots and used to make purified uranium cells. These last 10 times longer in a nuclear reactor, but require 20 times the initial uranium to make.
6. And of course, Gregorius Tech's Fusion reactor addon is pretty close to a balanced addon for one final tier of power generation. Though it currently burns way too much tin.
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