EV phenomenon I'd like to know more about.

A few SMP's ago when I was first introduced to IC2, I used creative mode to make a few experimental set-ups like everyone else was doing. This was before I learned things like having to set up MFSU's in parallel if you want to draw from them all at once, and no one on the server had heard of the multi-packet rule yet (now we have 3 people who use it frequently).

Everyone swore on the virtues of the glass fiber cable stuff. I mean, like it was the holy grail of IC2 wiring. HV, low amounts of loss, wonderful all around. I was called "wasting my time" with the HV cable, but I discovered an interesting phenomenon with it and EV that no one I immediately play with can explain.

I had a "battery building" of several MFSU's. They were not set up very well so while there were 40 or so, only about 8 would discharge at once into the power line to the next building. In the other building I had a bank of macerators, 6 of them. Each one had the wiki recommended maximum number of overclocker upgrades, and a fair number of power storage upgrades. They also had enough transformer upgrades each to handle HV without exploding. So the fiber cable comes in from the building next door, and just simply runs along the backs of all the macerators. Now when I ran them simultaneously in this configuration the ones up front would blaze along and speeds that would make me happy, while the ones in the back would clod along about as slow as a brand new out of the box macerator with no upgrades and running off of a batbox.

I made the following changes. Installed an LV transformer rigged to emit EV (feeding off of the same MFSU bank, no major layout changes), added another round of transformer upgrades to the macerators, and hooked them all up with delicious EV bearing fully insulated HV cable. Magically the entire bank of macerators ran at equal, blazing speeds. Nobody else on the server can explain that, and I'm not good enough at this engineering to figure these things out on my own. So I'm coming to you guys for help explaining it.

Thanks.

Thank you both. To clarify the set up, there were about 8 MFSU's all feeding into a single line that left the building they were in, crossed a 4 block alleyway, and went into the next building before running along all the macerators.

Thinking back I remember now that all the macerators had 64 power storage upgrades on them because hey, creative mode. These were present in both instances. Also, none of them were flickering in either set-up. Just running at different speeds.

I'm not sure if this would change anything. And you're right, I misspoke, I was using a flipped HV transformer given a redstone current to emit EV.

Quote from SpwnX

How did you know they were running at different speeds... ?
Also if item is inserted at same time, they are supposed to output it at the same time, given enough energy.
Another thing might be FPS problems, FPS lower than 20 can cause some machine operation delay.

FPS was pretty even. The faster machines would process up to 6 stacks of cobblestone into sand before the machines on the other side would finish their own. Could also just sit with the inventory open and watch the speed at which the "in progress" indicator was moving at. Some were cycling rapidly, others were slowly inching along.