Better?
http://prntscr.com/4s08hj
It should be noted that this nerfs the power output somewhat, i haven't tested how much it decreases thought. If you are going for function before looks you shouldnt build any towers 
Still it's producing a lot of power http://prntscr.com/4s0b2z
Wouldn't that work poorly for the same reason i had to cut my tree down?
You actually dont see it from the ground, and usually even if you are a bit up it is still shrouded by the clouds so its no so bad as you might think.
If the neighbours start complaining then i'le just tell them that we all have to make some sacrifices for the good of the enviroment!
im using version 2.2.646 on the latest version of bevo's techpack.
Ive increased my windpower a bit and i have to say it works extremly well. Quite cheap to make actually.
My current setup looks like this. http://prntscr.com/4rrf5g and i have 4 wind turbines, however i can easily expand that.
The middle row is at 160 and the upper and lower is at 171 and 149.
Anyone know if the wind turbines are affected by direction or could you place wind turbines on both sides? If thats the case i could place 18 wind turbines with just that setup. That is something like 1300-1500 or so eu/tick on avarage and it's like a bazzilion times cheaper and easier to make than nukes. they only cost like 50 ish iron, a bit of copper and tin for both the kinetic wind generator and kinetic generator. and then ofc the wind turbine is 9 steel and 288 coal powder. They do get consumed after a while but i havent been able to break even one of them, they last for a really long time. It's very easy to start with, you only need the basic machines and you got several tiers of rotors so you can quite easily make them after your initial setup with generators.
I wish wind power was that good in real life 
Edit: You can only place the wind power in one direction, so the setup above fits 9 wind turbines
Top of the world it is then.
Thats weird cause i have not been able to make it work for a very long time, like hundreds of in game days. Ive tried several heights (160. 200 and 250) with both carbon and steel blades and all i get is that it complains that it does not have enough wind. I don't think it even worked during rainstorms. It worked when i first built it but then again that was a few updates ago. i'm a bit sad it does not work cause it's probably among the easiest and cheapest ways of producing power in IC2 right now and the only running cost is coal.
Also, do you know if there is any difference in wind strenght between biomes?
Picture of the setup
http://prntscr.com/4rq18m
I flew around with an angel block to test the wind in the different biomes around my base to see if i could find any system for how it worked. I tested the wind generator at 120, 140, 160, 180, 200 and 245 and i found some nice results. I never got it to work at 245, it seems there is almost no wind at this height. The highest winds where at 160 and i had similar wind speeds at +- heights from 160. So 140 was similar as 180 and 120 with 200. I did this at about 6 different spots with about 150 blocks between over about 2 ingame days. each test took about 1 minute so wind speeds shouldnt have had time to change much. All tests showed the same result.
The carbon turbine still wouldnt work at 160 height around my base thought, i think it might be due to the big redwood tree beside it as it is only about 20-30 blocks away from the turbine. And at the heights where im above the reedwood tree there is no wind due to height.
Spwnx, do you know how large of an area around itself the new wind turbine checks for wind?
Edit: it was the tree. I cut it down and now it works just fine. 160 seems to be the sweet spot
FYI cutting down a redwood tree take A LOT of time
At the start of my new survival i tried out the new wind power mechanic using kinetic wind tirbines and a kinetic generator. I quickly crafted a carbon wind turbine and built myself a tall tower and like 150 long HV cable up into the sky. The first problem i encountered was finding enough wind for my turbine and my first question is this, is higher better with the new wind turbines or is 160 blocks the sweet spot like iv'e read somewhere?
Finally i managed to get the turbine running at around 230 height and it worked nicely for quite some time as a early energy source. However sometimes it stopped working due to the natural variation in wind so at times the kinetic wind generator would stop. This is all fine and well but over time the amount of time it had to little wind increased untill the turbine stopped working alltogether. it was as if the wind turbine had "consumed" all the wind in this location. Could someone comfirm this cause if that is the case the wind turbines would constantly need to be moved to produce any power, and using a lot of wind power would be out of the question.
Spwnx, im counting on you 
To put things into perspektive, to produce distilled water as fast as one electric heat generator and one steam generator you would need 72 solar distillers. Considering it would also need some kind of automation and piping and its only working 50% of the time i think i still would prefer to use a steam generator/condenser setup simply to save space and time.
What you are missing is the crazy amount of plutonium you need for that. for that setup you would need 21*3 plutonium or 567 spent fuel rods. To bring this into perspective, it's about 20 complete cycles of the largest nuclear reactors you can make at 20000s per cycle. Even if you where producing plutonium with your replicator (about 350 mb) it takes FOREVER to produce, im not even kidding. ofc you would also need 1134 iron ingots in adition to the superheated steam setup that will probably also consume steam turbines (not right now but likely in the future) for a measly 150 eu/tick.
Unless you are playing on a server where you have several reactors producing plutonium 24/7 you would never have enought plutonium to make more than a few of those and even then they would still have a large running cost of steel. you would probably be better of making stirling and then its 100 eu/tick.
It boils down to this, if you have enough nuclear power to produce enough plutonium to make that setup you wouldnt really care about the puny amount of power it produces to begin with.
Even with miners that an extreme amount you would need about 900 bucket of coolant for my setup. That would require an extraordinary amount of distilled water and a lot of lapis. Making it from water is out of the question (7200 lapis lol) but making 900 buckets of distilled water in excess of what the reactor needs for the steam turbines would be no easy task and it would still cost 900 lapis. And this is for just one reactor producing about 950 eu/tick. I usually want at least two reactors, one with mox and one with regular. I would be stuck boiling water with all my power for days
Considering i would have 14 heat exchangers i think that would require an enormous amount of hoppers and cans and coolant fluids. However it is an interesting concept as there are more item conduits with dense mode than fluid pipes with dense mode. The speed of the canning machine would have to be about 1 can every 0,75 seconds in my case as my reactor produces almost 1400 Hu per second.
Correct me if im wrong since im inexperienced with hopper automation but that would require the first Liquid heat exchanger to be full before it puts cans into the next one right?How many cans can you put into a liquid heat exchangers? if they can take an entire stack that would mean i would need 64 cans of coolant for every heat exchanger, which is somewhat insane considering i have 14 of em.
Also, how would you cycle the empty cans back to the canning machine?
I havent done a pure ic2 setup yet as i can't fit it in my reactor room, i would have to rebuild the whole reactor room and most of the reactor components. The components that are problematic should not be affected as the only thing they do is remove distilled water from the kinetic steam generators and put it back into the steam generator. The thing i could do is change whats moving around the fluids between the kinetic steam turbines and condenser, however i doubt that will effect the steam generator.
Also my reactor can't be run with a pure ic2 setup as i don't think they add any way to prioritize where the hot coolant goes. I dont have an even heat production which means the hot coolant have to prioritize the steam cycles before the stirling cycles. With the current setup it sends the first 1200 heat to the liquid heat exchangers responsible for the steam first and the remaining uneven amount that varies a bit is sent to the stirling generators as it doesn't matter if they don't have a constant production.
I might test it in creative mode and see if i can reach stable operation there thought. Don't want to build another reactor that might not work like i want it to as iv'e built 3 already which is a lot of work in survival :P.
Ive rebuilt my whole setup of steam now and im using stirling generators instead. As it is right now it is impossible to make the steam generators completly stable. They sometimes fuck upp when teleporting or logging in and while ive implemented systems to avoid my reactor blowing up i still have to manually check them everytime i get back from some adventure.
The problem i have that i cannot fix is that the steam generator sometimes stop producing superheated steam. Even thought it is perfectly set up it sometimes stops working. Even thought it has all the heat it needs it starts flipping on and of producing steam and distilled water . To fix it i have to manually set the output to 1 mb per tick so it starts producing superheated steam again and then increase it to 2 mm/tick. It never stops working while im at my base but sometimes when i log in or teleport with the nether portal it starts mailfunctioning. Even thought iv'e got my base chunkloaded.
If someone knows what the problem is with the steam generator i would really appriciate the help as im loosing 400 eu/tick right now using stirling instead of superheated steam (i actually have 2 seperate systems for both so i can switch between stirling and superheated steam easily)
Survival.
Mark 5 reactor to the right with superheated steam
Mark 5 mox reactor to the left with stirling
Stirling setup is somewhat easier
It seems that in the current build the kinetic steam turbines don't actually consume the steam turbine
It's been like this for an hour right now.
Playing around with mark 5 mox reactors made me think there really isn't a reason why you cant do this with the regular reactors as well. since you need on/off regulation on the reactor anyways with the instability of the steam cycle ive been thinking of rebuilding my current reactor into this
The setup is extremly easy
As usual the efficiency is really good. Each reactor tic produce 2944 heat with roughly 1362-1370 (it varies a bit) cooling which makes it about 1 second on and 1½ second off on avarage. It should produce about 980 eu per tick using a combined superheated steam/stirling setup which is the highest power output ive managed to reach so far with a 5x5 reactor
I also want to point out something i'm not sure everyone picked up yet. High efficiency reactors are way superior in 5x5 reactors than in regular reactors. The usual balance with EU nuclear reactors is that higher efficiency reactors produce lower power as they have higher heat/eu. However for the 5x5 reactor what is producing power is the actual cooling capacity of the reactor and the efficiency depends on how much heat the reactor produces per tic. One good case is comparing these two reactors
http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…adh05nlzbpykw84kwczan05q8
efficiency: 4.67
eu output: 280
Heat produced: 640
http://www.talonfiremage.pwp.b…00drdsvntps8fdm4xmr3ydlhc
efficiency: 3
eu output: 420
Heat produced: 672
Althought in eu mode, the second low efficiency reactor is vastly superior to the high efficiency reactor in output. This is not true for the 5x5 reactor. I've tested both these reactors in survival and the first high efficiency reactor produces 1280 heat/s (640*2) while the second one produces 1344 Hu/s (672*2). This means they are almost equal in power output but the higher efficiency reactor uses only 12 fuel rods while the low efficiency one uses 28 fuel rods. That means in the 5x5 reactor the high efficiency reactor is more than twice as effective as the low efficiency reactor while in eu mode it is only about 50% more efficient.
TL DR:
High efficiency reactor designs are almost always better than low efficiency ones in pretty much every aspect. They are just plain better and low efficiency designs should be avoided in the 5x5 unless you want plutonium
They work in set of two. Even thought it says it can transfer 50 heat with five it actually transfers 40. it can transfer even 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100 in practice. The calcification is slow enough that it does not matter much. I think it calcifies completly after 100 buckets of water or 100 buckets of distilled water or 5000 seconds or so in my case. at 100 % calcification the process stops but nothing is damaged and it stops transfering heat to the steam generator. You can then resett the steam generator again by just picking it up and placing it down again.
I meant the solar destilation of water, not the solar power.
The method ive used to create distilled water is a bit wastefull but it works and its also quite fast. I just built a electric heater that boils water in a steam generator. it produces 20 mb of distilled water per second per 100 Hu. Ofc you could add more heaters to make it even faster. ofc you don't have to run it on electricity as you could just as easily run it on lava. However its more convenient for me since i have a very large power production.
You could add a turbines to be less wastefull of the energy. a single turbine would return 50% of the investment which is quite nice. However if you use lava there i really wouldn't be that concerned with wasting lava
There is also a thing that has to be considered when using a combination of stirling engines and steam. Unless the heat of the reactor can be evenly divided by 20 (if you have 40 excess heat you use 4 heat conduits etc) you need some kind of dense mode cabling to transfer the hot coolant to the liquid heat exchangers. Unless you put the liquid heat exchanger using stirling on a lower priority than the ones using steam it will try to split the hot coolant evenly between the steam cycles and the stirling cycles and you will end up with either to much hot colant or to little which will screw upp your steam cycles. The only mods that can do that i know of is steves factory manager and thermal expansion cables.
It could be a bit shorter but it should give beginners the information they need to get started with the reactors which is no easy task as it is now. Even learned a few things myself, didnt even know you could make distilled water slowly with solar power, ive added that to my setup to make sure i dont loose any distilled water in the setup.
Nice effort!
both are supposed to work, i encountered the same problem with 1 mb. It happens when im out exploring. It exploded after i had a trip to the nether so im guessing it has something to do if the generator misses a tick or something. I do not need ejector upgrades in the steam turbines as im using steves factory manager to pull out all fluids. Iv'e tried using ejector upgrades but it makes no difference. My lava setup has been working without fluid ejector upgrades for at least 5 hours now without a problem. i could try increasing the pace at which steve's is pulling out fluids with i suppose. Right now im pulling every one second, maybe i should go with once per tick instead and se if that solves it.
Superheated steam or steam is not supposed to be able to accumilate in the kinetic steam turbines, they should be consumed as soon as they enter the turbine however all of my problems stem from either steam accumulating in the second reactor (this is not so bad cause it only waste distilled water and the cooling still works) This happens almost every time i step through a portal. Then it happened with the first turbine which shut of the cooling to the reactor which quickly resulted in an explosion. At least i have proper safety measurements for my new reactor.
Edit: Went to the nether and the same thing happened again, luckily the safety mechanism saved the reactor this time. For some reason the kinetic steam turbine bugged when i went throught the portal. This is strange considering ive chunkloaded my base. Really at loss at what could be the problem. This time the lava setup also failed so it seems to be steam generators/kinetic steam generators in general that has a problem
I think i have made a safety that works
http://prntscr.com/4qllew. I forcefully void all superheated steam and steam from the kinetic steam generators via steve's factory manager. This prevents the blockage that happens when i go through the nether portal and makes the process go smoothly. Since normaly no steam or superheated steam appears in the generator it does not affect its normal operation.
Ive been having some problem with the stability of the steam generators actually. Sometimes they stop working for some reason when at 221 bar and 2 mb at 400 Hu. The strange thing is that it is only when working with the hot coolant. My lava setup works like a charm and ive never had any problem with it. To get it running i usuall have to get stable operation at 1 mb per tick and then increase it to 2 mb per tick or it just produces steam even when it has all the hot coolant it needs.
Lava setup 300 eu/tick with ender io and buildcraft
http://prntscr.com/4q9fcj
Mementh: I think its an optimal setup using only ic2. If you use some other mod that is good at moving fluids you can make setups that inputs 400 HU per steam generator. which makes the setup a lot cheaper since you need only about half the equipment (still need as many liquid heat exchangers). Ive used both ender io fluid pipes and steve's factory manager to great sucess.
My current setup looks like this using steve's factory manager:
I i use 1200 Hu in 3 steam generators and the remaining 144 heat is used in stirling engines. At first i had 6 steam cycles with 200 Hu per steamcycle but this is A LOT better as there is a large difference in running cost and initial investment. its also a lot cleaner.
I prefer moving the coolant away from the reactor as i can then make a smaller reactor room out of reinforced stone and build the turbines outside. However if you like putting the turbines on the sides of the 5x5 you can also make a simular setup as you have done but with 400 Hu per side of the 5x5. Iv'e tested it in creative and it works just fine using ender io.
Edit: Scratch the stability thing, there is now nothing left of my poor reactor, lucky i enclosed it in reinforced stone, only the reactor broke and not my base. The reason for the breakdown was this
For some unknown reason the turbine stopped processing the overheated steam and boom went my reactor. Anyone else having similar problems? Im leaning more and more towards using stirlings for 5x5. Both kinetic steam turbines and steam generators are highly unstable and unless you have a safety system on your reactor it might just go boom. I wont make the same misstake again.
I also found another bug. As long as the steam generator is pumping water into blocks besides it (for instance 1 mb/tick of distilled water that is instantly put back) it will never loose heat. My steam generators stay at 375 degrees forever as long as i keep recycling distilled water.
