Using Nuclear power for first time - Transferring energy to base (?)

[Blackbook]

Hi there everyone..

I'm new to the forums, and lets be honest, I'm new to Minecraft and Tekkit altogether. I've been watcihng the Yogscast Tekkit with Duncan series, and copied the first 20 or so episodes to help me get a grip on how Tekkit works and the basic functions of it all. It's been a great help, and that should give you some ideas on how un-advanced I am with all this stuff..

I've built myself a nuclear reactor with 6 reactor cores and have set this up outside of my base. It' had to be build 50meters from where I want the power, and to run the cable will probably end up being about 70/80 pieces in length. I've been reading up and seen that the 3(/4)xIns HV Cable looses a lot of energy per block, and was wondering if laying an 80xLine of the stuff was the best way of transferring the energy from my reactor to my base.

I've not actually turned my reactor on yet to see how much (or maybe even little) that 80+EU loss from the cable would be. If I wouldn't even notice it or wether the whole exorsize has been pointless.

Someone on a ventrilo I hang on said something about 'relaying' the energy, but I've no idea how to do that, or even if thats a reliable suggestion.

So, Technic Forums, my question is ;; What is the best way to send your Nuclear Reactor power to your base that is 50m away ?

I dont mind reading, watching, learning - just point me in the right directions!

Thanks for your time and reading my post

[Xylord]

I myself isn't advanced enough yet to answer this question satisfyingly, but I'd say that the loss would be pretty small, even if you used the 3/4 ins HV cables. After all, the more intense a current is, the less loss of energy there is in distance, and nuclear energy is pretty much the most intense there is, since it is EV (Extreme Voltage). I was wondering the other day if there was any way to transmit EU wirelessly, but I haven't found an answer yet.

[Blackbook]

TY for the reply. I'll run the cable, convert it down as per Duncan's guides suggest and see what happens :D

[Xylord]

TY for the reply. I'll run the cable, convert it down as per Duncan's guides suggest and see what happens

As a test, you could see if you're able to run the mass fabricator without completely emptying your MSF, or not too fast at least. If you can, I'd say your energy production is fair enough.

[warpspeed10]

The cable you chose will depend on the output of your reactor. This can be measured with an EU-Reader by simply right clicking a cable.

Glass fiber cables are the best for long distance transfer. They can carry up to 512 Energy Units per tick, which is high voltage. If your reactor produces more than this you will need 4x insulated HV cable which can carry up to 2048 EU per tick before burning up. That being said, High voltage cable loses one energy unit every block it travels, so a reactor producing 700 EU/t transmitting to an MFSU 80 blocks away would only get 620 EU/t to the MFSU. Glass fiber on the other hand, while requiring diamonds to craft, will transmit energy 40 blocks before losing one EU/t.

Without knowing more about your reactor setup, it's really hard to say for certain. Could you maybe post some pics, or add more detail?

[Geweldigheid]

You can use HV transformers, (they transfer the power to lower amounts of EU, but more per tick) and then run a glass fibre cable to the output of the transformer to your base, or you can use MFSU carts from railcraft.

[Xylord]

You can use HV transformers, (they transfer the power to lower amounts of EU, but more per tick) and then run a glass fibre cable to the output of the transformer to your base, or you can use MFSU carts from railcraft.

Would it be possible to fully automatize a system using the MFSU carts? I doubt so, unless you're ready to waste a bunch of energy. Tell me if I'm wrong, after all, I haven't really dug into railcraft yet.

[Geweldigheid]

Would it be possible to fully automatize a system using the MFSU carts? I doubt so, unless you're ready to waste a bunch of energy. Tell me if I'm wrong, after all, I haven't really dug into railcraft yet.

I think you can, with a timer, boarding rails energy loaders, energy unloaders, etc, and Neither have I dug into railcraft. You probably aren't wasting any power but you can use a MFSU in between the enrgy loader and the reactor to be safe.

[Blindcrow]

im going to agree with warpspeed on this one. make a HV Transformer to change the EV into HV packets and then glass fibre it to your base. Its expensive but definitely the most reliable method to lose the least amount of energy. If you want to preserve it as EV (but whyyyy would you do that!?) all you need is to make another HV transformer at the end of the glass fibre cable with one of the single dot faces connected to it and place a lever (and flip it) next to it so it inputs HV and outputs EV. Why would you do that is beyond me tho, maybe Energy Links can withstand EV... or maybe you could make a very energy expensive uninsulated HV cable defensive fence?

*shrug*

[Geweldigheid]

im going to agree with warpspeed on this one. make a HV Transformer to change the EV into HV packets and then glass fibre it to your base. Its expensive but definitely the most reliable method to lose the least amount of energy. If you want to preserve it as EV (but whyyyy would you do that!?) all you need is to make another HV transformer at the end of the glass fibre cable with one of the single dot faces connected to it and place a lever (and flip it) next to it so it inputs HV and outputs EV. Why would you do that is beyond me tho, maybe Energy Links can withstand EV... or maybe you could make a very energy expensive uninsulated HV cable defensive fence?

*shrug*

...I was the one who suggested that?

[Beer]

There are a few ways to do this.

The first way, the one I would choose, would be to create some substations between your reactor and where your sending the current. Remember, these cables all have losses at some point as pointed out above. So let's say that your reactor is only putting out enough to require a glass fibre cable. So about 39-40 stretches throw in an MFSU. This will allow you to not only transmit current without loss, but also create sort of a backup in the event your reactor shuts off for whatever reason.

The other is to do what was suggested above and use the MFSU cart to carry power by rail. This isn't hard to set up, but the problem is that it is a moving object and with any moving object there is always the issue of malfunction. Something could land on the rails stopping the cart or what have you.

I'm working on a power plant myself and have already planned to transmit energy from it outwards by way of sending an HV current to a massive MFSU junction to power my island's luminators and other various EU drinking machines. This current is going to be reduced to an MV current and transmitted by way of various MFE's and glass fibre cables. This allows me to spiderweb power all across my island without any loss.

[VideoBoy]

Railcraft? Wat? Why not just:

Nuky reactor -> HV transformer -> fiberglass -> yo base. I would suggest putting a MFSU every 40 blocks for 0 power loss, but who cares about ONE EU every 40 blocks?

Alternatively, set up a battery teleport system with ender chests & charging benches. I've done it before when teleport pipes broke on my server, it's not hard.

Relevant anecdote: I had a mark 1 reactor at bedrock under my base, hooked up with 60 meters of fiberglass cable. So this one time I'm feeling adventurous and try to increase its power output by building an iceblock maker next to it to cool it down. I got it to output ~600EU/t and then I heard a "fss" sound. My 60 fiberglass cables, vanished in an instant, then 2 MFSU's exploded and took out two control computers which allowed my mass fabricator to eat up the remaining MFSUs. By the time I got to that room, I had lots of UU matter but six empty MFSUs. All my power was gone. Moral of the story: nuclear reactors aren't toys.

[Xirema]

I myself isn't advanced enough yet to answer this question satisfyingly, but I'd say that the loss would be pretty small, even if you used the 3/4 ins HV cables. After all, the more intense a current is, the less loss of energy there is in distance, and nuclear energy is pretty much the most intense there is, since it is EV (Extreme Voltage). I was wondering the other day if there was any way to transmit EU wirelessly, but I haven't found an answer yet.

Nuclear Reactors (like all generators) output packets the size of the output rate. So coal generators output packets of 10EU each, Geo generate 20EU packets, Solar generate 1EU packets, etc.

The only reason people get confused with Nuclear energy is because they have variable outputs. So let's be clear: the output of a nuclear reactor USUALLY is not EV. If you're ice-cooling with 20+ uranium cells, then YES, it will be EV, but most people don't make reactors that complex.

Regardless. Wireless EU transfer CAN be done, but you need Ender chests and a working knowledge of Redpower (I suppose technically it also can be done with Buildcraft, but with a MUCH more complicated system).

im going to agree with warpspeed on this one. make a HV Transformer to change the EV into HV packets and then glass fibre it to your base. Its expensive but definitely the most reliable method to lose the least amount of energy. If you want to preserve it as EV (but whyyyy would you do that!?) all you need is to make another HV transformer at the end of the glass fibre cable with one of the single dot faces connected to it and place a lever (and flip it) next to it so it inputs HV and outputs EV. Why would you do that is beyond me tho, maybe Energy Links can withstand EV... or maybe you could make a very energy expensive uninsulated HV cable defensive fence?

*shrug*

Because glass fibre is expensive as fuck. 1 diamond/6 cable (4 if you don't have any silver) means that if you want to run cable over a distance of 80 units, you need 16-20 diamonds. And that's not including the diamonds you'll have already spent on ensuring the proper storage capacity of your reactor. (MFSU's or Mass Fabricators)

Conversely, if you're running 80 units of HV cable, that's only 80 sticky resin + 20-ish iron ingots, and if you use only 2 diamonds to make the transformers to EV current, then you only lose 64/2048 == 3.125% (Fully insulated HV cable loses 4EU every 5 blocks) energy passing over that distance. Sure, glass fibre reduces that number to 1/10 the energy loss (0.3906%), but at the cost of 14-18 additional diamonds, and unless you get lucky mining, or else have lots of extra coal, then you have to run your reactors for quite some time to make up the energy losses in fabricating those diamonds from uu-matter (Assuming 1 diamond equals no less than 1.5M EU (they'll cost as much as 9M EU) then recuperating 15 diamonds needs 22.5M EU saved from passage over that cable, which translates to 822.850M EU having to travel over that cable to gain from using Glass Fibre cable in a best case scenario)

[Beer]

Diamonds aren't an issue once you've got a compressor and a macerator, both which are easy to make without diamonds. You just need a decent amount of coal and some obsidian and they're both common and easy to acquire. So glass fibre cable is not as unreachable as you think. I use it primarily as a main source of cabling because of how great it is to transfer any current over long distances.

[Xylord]

Railcraft? Wat? Why not just:

Nuky reactor -> HV transformer -> fiberglass -> yo base. I would suggest putting a MFSU every 40 blocks for 0 power loss, but who cares about ONE EU every 40 blocks?

Alternatively, set up a battery teleport system with ender chests & charging benches. I've done it before when teleport pipes broke on my server, it's not hard.

Relevant anecdote: I had a mark 1 reactor at bedrock under my base, hooked up with 60 meters of fiberglass cable. So this one time I'm feeling adventurous and try to increase its power output by building an iceblock maker next to it to cool it down. I got it to output ~600EU/t and then I heard a "fss" sound. My 60 fiberglass cables, vanished in an instant, then 2 MFSU's exploded and took out two control computers which allowed my mass fabricator to eat up the remaining MFSUs. By the time I got to that room, I had lots of UU matter but six empty MFSUs. All my power was gone. Moral of the story: nuclear reactors aren't toys.

Oh me too, i wanted to make an ice-cooled reactor, but in the end, I just found it was a pain to be transmuting random crap into ice all the time and putting it in the reactor. How do you make an ice maker?

[Xirema]

Oh me too, i wanted to make an ice-cooled reactor, but in the end, I just found it was a pain to be transmuting random crap into ice all the time and putting it in the reactor. How do you make an ice maker?

The best method I've observed is to make some snowmen, strand them in one place, hook up some block breakers to harvest the snow, and send the snowballs to a compressor (Preferably a couple of singularity compressors). This is actually a lot slower than using an Energy Condenser, but if you don't want to use Equivalent Exchange then this is the way to go.

Alternately, if you ARE using equivalent exchange, then Ice is only worth 1 EMC (well, it was in Tekkit 2.1, I haven't tested since then) so all you need is a few energy collectors.

[Xylord]

The best method I've observed is to make some snowmen, strand them in one place, hook up some block breakers to harvest the snow, and send the snowballs to a compressor (Preferably a couple of singularity compressors). This is actually a lot slower than using an Energy Condenser, but if you don't want to use Equivalent Exchange then this is the way to go.

Alternately, if you ARE using equivalent exchange, then Ice is only worth 1 EMC (well, it was in Tekkit 2.1, I haven't tested since then) so all you need is a few energy collectors.

I always felt like using energy collectors is a bit cheap (No offense to alchemists ), I'm going to try this "Snowman Abuse" method!

[Blindcrow]

...I was the one who suggested that?

Glass fiber cables are the best for long distance transfer. They can carry up to 512 Energy Units per tick, which is high voltage. That being said, High voltage cable loses one energy unit every block it travels, so a reactor producing 700 EU/t transmitting to an MFSU 80 blocks away would only get 620 EU/t to the MFSU. Glass fiber on the other hand, while requiring diamonds to craft, will transmit energy 40 blocks before losing one EU/t.

he said it first ;)

[Wendo]

Of course, if you can't afford the diamonds for glass fibre, then the best way is to upconvert to EV, use 4x insulated and down convert at the other end, that way you're losing less of your power since you're sending it in the biggest packets. You might still lose 80EU, but you keep 1968 compared to losing 80 from every 700 you make (or whatever your reactor output it)

[Beer]

Of course, if you can't afford the diamonds for glass fibre, then the best way is to upconvert to EV, use 4x insulated and down convert at the other end, that way you're losing less of your power since you're sending it in the biggest packets. You might still lose 80EU, but you keep 1968 compared to losing 80 from every 700 you make (or whatever your reactor output it)

Again, like I said above... diamonds aren't expensive once you get a compressor and macerator built. Grind up coal, make it into coal balls, combine with obsidian, compress. Diamond!

[Monty Anderson]

Thanks!