Well, boring stuff is usually the most solid one.. if your idea of fun is to run around the world replacing anchors and pumps once a day, and risking explosion because of server bugs, then be my guest. The combustions are fun and all, but for one, they demand more space, are unstable and MUST be checked on once a day. I mean, one server hiccup and your whole engine room is gone, including pipes, tesseracts and all. Even better is a fully powered AE system, with no power.. so that you end up with a dead system and no stuff.
If keeping a seperate power source is necessary, then it kinda speaks for itself how useless they are. But heeeey, they are fun right?