You are experiencing the Thermal Expansion 3 changes here. There is only one type of Tesseract where there used to be three. I assume you already found out how to craft the new ones.
TE's own pipes will work fine with Tesseracts, namely Itemducs and Fluiducts (the pipe formerly known as Liquiduct). But on non-TE machines, you usually need to set the pipe head to extract mode, i.e. wrench it so a red triangle appears on it. Depending on what you are facing, you may have to apply a Redstone signal to make it actually extract, or alternatively install a Pneumatic Servo in the pipe head, right click it with an empty hand, and configure it to extract only when NOT receiving a Redstone signal.
With these tools, you should be able to make it work fine. Some machines (e.g. Buildcraft Quarry) will not directly connect to a Tesseract whatever you do, so you need a buffer chest. Energy via Tesseract works fine, although it only carries Redstone Flux, the new standard power system. If you need MJ, add conduits in between, as these make all the necessary conversions in TE3.
Oh, and you can set the three Tesseract modes in the interface (gear icon), so you can actually fine-tune what a given Tesseract does. To separate all your projects, you can set pairs (or groups) of Tesseracts to share a frequency, which has a number and a name. Most people have separate ones for power, steam, items and other fluids (steam counts as a fluid).
A note about energy: Yellorium Reactors, with or without Turbines, are the new "Infinte Energy" of choice. There are of course lots of options, but that one is the easiest, and for many also the most fun one. You can opt to turn all that >lava into diamonds instead.
