I need a crash course in Blutricity

[Omicron]

I never used that stuff before, and I want to experiment with it. Obviously, getting it running is easy enough - plop down a Redpower solar panel, wire it up to for example a blulectric furnace, and it works.

But what about the details?

For IC2 and BC, we know the discrete units of energy, which generators/engines produce how much, which machines consume how much, and so on. I don't know any of that for Redpower. So my questions are:

- What is the discrete energy unit that Redpower uses? How much does a solar panel produce, how much a thermopile? And what is the capacity of the batteries and the battery box?

- Is there a comprehensive list of machinery that requires Blutricity to work? This recipe list I've been using doesn't provide this information. How much energy does each of these machines consume per tick and/or per activation?

- Is there distance based energy loss on blue alloy wire, or can you transfer over an essentially infinite distance so long as you can keep the chunks loaded?

- Do Redpower solar panels stop generating energy at night or during rain, like the IC2 ones?

- Do we know if there will be other power sources besides solar panels and thermopiles in future releases? Have people considered energy conversion mods between, say, IC2 and Redpower? Does Blutricity work in a similar enough manner to make such a conversion feasible?

[Krizby]

First, all Redpower solar panels and machines transmit power through them so blue alloy wire is only needed to transmit power at distances.

For your other questions, there is a Redpower wiki but it doesn't show the exact power values either. I guess that it isn't designed to be exact, e.g. if you take a look at a Redpower battery box there is a internal buffer that has to fill up before the battery starts filling up. Also, battery boxes even out power between them if they are connected so there's no way of knowing the exact values.

I have not found any distance based loss and have been able to transmit power over 300+ blocks.

The Redpower solar panels only generate power during the day.

Eloraam, the creator of Redpower, wants more ways of generating power but those features are for a future release.

The wiki I linked to shows all the machines that need Blulectric power.

[Omicron]

Thanks for the answer. Looks like the wiki has a little more info, yes. Though I find it odd that the machines are described as consuming volts in order to function... if this was modeled after RL electricity, then should be consuming amperes, but require a certain voltage to be present in order to activate. Wonder if that's an error on the wiki editor's part.

[gavjenks]

Thanks for the answer. Looks like the wiki has a little more info, yes. Though I find it odd that the machines are described as consuming volts in order to function... if this was modeled after RL electricity, then should be consuming amperes, but require a certain voltage to be present in order to activate. Wonder if that's an error on the wiki editor's part.

Real life work is not done by volts or by amperes. Work is done by watts (amperes * volts) over time. The product of the two numbers (divided by time) determines how much stuff you can actually do with your electricity. In the English system, this comes out to KWh (kilowatt hours). In the metric system, it is measured in joules.

Also, although cheap household appliances may require a certain voltage, a lot of industrial machinery has built in transformers and adapters and a little selection dial or something that allows you to choose between 110 volts, 220 volts, 480 volts, whatever is convenient at your work site. Stuff can theoretically run at any voltage (if it is well insulated, etc.). It will simply consume more amps at the lower voltages to compensate (which means you also need to have bigger circuit breakers and thicker wall wires)

I BELIEVE, although I'm not positive, that redpower correctly (realistically) calculates power as a product of volts and amps together, And actual work done or energy storage, etc. accurately as well, as ((volts*amps)/time).

BuildCraft is also technically accurate in using joules. However, everything is abstracted, and the other numbers that are a part of getting to joules do not actually exist anywhere in the code. It is as if it is assumed that everything in buildcraft is rigorously standardized to a single amperage or voltage.

IndustrialCraft is just totally unrealistic and wrong, in that voltage doesn't matter, and work and power are all a function of amps. In fact, there is no variable in IC that clearly corresponds to voltage. There are only "packets" which don't really mean anything in real life (in real life, there is exactly one packet size at all times: one electron)

[Teraku]

Real life work is not done by volts or by amperes. Work is done by watts (amperes * volts) over time. The product of the two numbers (divided by time) determines how much stuff you can actually do with your electricity. In the English system, this comes out to KWh (kilowatt hours). In the metric system, it is measured in joules.

Also, although cheap household appliances may require a certain voltage, a lot of industrial machinery has built in transformers and adapters and a little selection dial or something that allows you to choose between 110 volts, 220 volts, 480 volts, whatever is convenient at your work site. Stuff can theoretically run at any voltage (if it is well insulated, etc.). It will simply consume more amps at the lower voltages to compensate (which means you also need to have bigger circuit breakers and thicker wall wires)

I BELIEVE, although I'm not positive, that redpower correctly (realistically) calculates power as a product of volts and amps together, And actual work done or energy storage, etc. accurately as well, as ((volts*amps)/time).

BuildCraft is also technically accurate in using joules. However, everything is abstracted, and the other numbers that are a part of getting to joules do not actually exist anywhere in the code. It is as if it is assumed that everything in buildcraft is rigorously standardized to a single amperage or voltage.

IndustrialCraft is just totally unrealistic and wrong, in that voltage doesn't matter, and work and power are all a function of amps. In fact, there is no variable in IC that clearly corresponds to voltage. There are only "packets" which don't really mean anything in real life (in real life, there is exactly one packet size at all times: one electron)

You could not have been more wrong. Metric actually measures it in Kwh. At least that's the one which actually makes sense. We hardly know what a joule is here. Joules is the amount of energy in a food product here, nothing to do with electricity.

[gavjenks]

You could not have been more wrong. Metric actually measures it in Kwh. At least that's the one which actually makes sense. We hardly know what a joule is here. Joules is the amount of energy in a food product here, nothing to do with electricity.

... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule

Like I said, Joules and KWh both measure the exact same thing: amount of work. In fact, they can be directly converted with a constant, which happens to be 3,600,000 joules / KWh.

Heating a substance happens to be one form of doing work. And in metric using countries, they happen to use joules to measure the chemical potential of food to heat things (in the English system, we use calories, which are ALSO yet another measure of work, and ALSO have direct conversions to both joules and KWh).

You are apparently correct that metric countries use KWh to meter electricity, of which I was unaware (I thought they used megajoules). However, it doesn't change the fact that these are all measurements for the exact same thing, and that if any one of them "makes sense," then all the others must make sense as well.

Nor does it change the fact that a joule has no other definitions besides being the SI unit of work, thus making it completely unambiguous what BuildCraft means when they (correctly) measure the working potential of their machinery in joules.

[Omicron]

Alright, I've been toying around with Blutricity a bit more, and I've come across something that made me curious.

The Thermopile. I suppose few people use it, because the solar panel is more powerful and doesn't require you to puzzle out its function, but I like puzzles. Hopefully there's another person like that here who can share their findings.

So far, I have only been able to get it to work with lava next to it. Using fire as a heat source, or using just an ice block with no heat on the other side, has been generating nothing at all. Using lava on one side and ice on the other generates a bit of energy. Unfortunately, the lava will melt the ice within seconds, so you actually end up with water instead. Lava/Water generates less energy than Lava/Ice. Lava/Dirt or Lava/Air generates zero energy.

It does not matter which face of the thermopile the Lava and Water blocks are against. Left/right works just as well left/front or left/rear or other such things. As such, you can have more than one water block next to the Thermopile. For example, Lava left, Water right and front. This generates more energy than just a single water block. I have not tested using multiple lava blocks with one water block.

Has anyone here ever actually used Thermopiles for energy generation? If so, can you share some more insights on their workings, and possibly some good designs on how to set them up for maximum efficiency?

[Xylord]

Alright, I've been toying around with Blutricity a bit more, and I've come across something that made me curious.

The Thermopile. I suppose few people use it, because the solar panel is more powerful and doesn't require you to puzzle out its function, but I like puzzles. Hopefully there's another person like that here who can share their findings.

So far, I have only been able to get it to work with lava next to it. Using fire as a heat source, or using just an ice block with no heat on the other side, has been generating nothing at all. Using lava on one side and ice on the other generates a bit of energy. Unfortunately, the lava will melt the ice within seconds, so you actually end up with water instead. Lava/Water generates less energy than Lava/Ice. Lava/Dirt or Lava/Air generates zero energy.

It does not matter which face of the thermopile the Lava and Water blocks are against. Left/right works just as well left/front or left/rear or other such things. As such, you can have more than one water block next to the Thermopile. For example, Lava left, Water right and front. This generates more energy than just a single water block. I have not tested using multiple lava blocks with one water block.

Has anyone here ever actually used Thermopiles for energy generation? If so, can you share some more insights on their workings, and possibly some good designs on how to set them up for maximum efficiency?

The maximum efficiency according to the wiki (Uh, I didn't actually say that) is one lava directly under the thermopile, four water blocks on the sides and the top is used to take energy out.

[Omicron]

I see... that makes sense. I didn't even think of using the bottom face. Going to try that out.

[Omicron]

Alright! Thanks to discovering the Voltmeter (how could I have missed that!), I was able to do some pretty neat testing. Here's what I found out:

General Blutricity

Voltage corresponds to the charge status of the energy network in percent. For example, connect a single blulectric alloy furnance to a generator (solar or thermopile). The readout will start at 0V when the furnace is empty, it will read 50V when the furnace is half charged, and it will peak at 100V when the furnace is 100% full. I have no idea if Voltage has any other function, f. ex. making you consume less energy for the same action in a network that's near 100% compared to one that's lower. I can't think of a good setup to reliably test such a thing right now.

Blulectric machinery will begin working around the 50V mark (or cease, if you're discharging). I did not specifically measure, it might be 45V instead or something. A Battery Box will begin charging around 91V-92V (this I did measure) and discharging not much lower at 80-something (forgot to pay attention to the value).

Amperage corresponds to the actual amount of energy generated. This is where the Solar Panel and the Thermopile have different ratings. Each of them generates a set amperage, independent of the current voltage of the network (they will generate the same amount of A at 1V as they do at 100V). The charging speed appears constant as well - charging the network from 0% to 10% (AKA 0V to 10V) seems to take just as long as charging it from 90% to 100%. I'm saying "seems" because I didn't specifically test it, I just didn't notice any major change in charging speed depending on voltage.

Thermopile

The Thermopile has five valid faces - bottom, and the four sides. Placing a hot/cold block on top will have no effect at all; it is purely for output (you can, however, output from the other sides as well if you like).

For the Thermopile to generate energy, it needs a "hot budget" and a "cold budget". Both must be present, it is not enough to slap down a very hot or cold block on its own and hope to match it against the neutral environment. Different blocks are worth different amounts of hot or cold "budget":

Fire: 0.125A "hot"

Lava: 0.500A "hot"

Water: 0.125A "cold"

Snow: 0.500A "cold"

Ice: 0.500A "cold"

Adding one block of Lava allows the Thermopile to generate up to 0.5A in energy, if it has that much "cold budget" as well. Meaning, it needs to have either an ice or snow block, or four blocks of water next to it. However, one Lava and four blocks of Ice still only generate 0.5A, because even though there is 2.0A worth of "cold budget", the single block of Lava is still only worth 0.5A.

Other examples, to visualize it:

1x Fire + 1x Water: 0.125A

1x Fire + 2x Water: 0.125A

2x Fire + 2x Water: 0.250A

2x Fire + 1x Snow: 0.250A

2x Lava + 3x Water: 0.375A

Since there are five valid faces, the absolute maximum you can get a Thermopile to output is 1.000A, using two Lava and two Snow/Ice blocks. However, since the Snow/Ice will melt, this is not a stable configuration. The best stable output is 0.500A, using the 1x Lava, 4x Water setup that is mentioned on the Tekkit wiki.

Solar Panel

The Redpower solar panel works during the same daily timespan that the IC2 solar panel does. However, in contrast to the IC2 counterpart, it ignores rain, snow and thunderstorms and will work normally during those events, so long as it is day.

For some odd reason, the solar panel's power output differed somewhat depending on what was connected to it.

One consumer connected: 1.86A

Two consumers connected: 1.94A

If the single consumer, or one of the two consumers, was a Battery Box and the network charge status (voltage) got high enough for it to start charging its mass storage, the solar panel's output changed again to 2.00A. This is probably the panel's true output rating. I have no idea why it would be less in the other cases. The Thermopile did not show this behavior, even when linking together several of them.

[Xylord]

Since there are five valid faces, the absolute maximum you can get a Thermopile to output is 1.000A, using two Lava and two Snow/Ice blocks. However, since the Snow/Ice will melt, this is not a stable configuration. The best stable output is 0.500A, using the 1x Lava, 4x Water setup that is mentioned by Xylord.

Oh, seems like you made a typo.

Those numbers are very interesting. I didn't know solar panels were so much more powerful than piles, I thought they were maybe 1 and half, twice as powerful, but not four times.

[Omicron]

Keep in mind that Solar Panels generate nothing during the night, but Thermopiles do. That means the difference is not as big as it seems. If night and day are exactly the same length (and I have no idea if they are), then Solar Panels would on average generate twice as much as Thermopiles.

Also, come to think of it, I failed a bit in testing - the Thermopiles I used were already charging a Battery Box, and the wiki does mention that the stable output is lower than what I measured (0.46A vs. 0.50A). So it would seem that Thermopiles do in fact show the same odd behavior as the solar panels concerning variable output. It's probably by design (or an unintended side effect), I just don't understand why yet. Maybe physics major gavjenks can say something on that topic :p

[Mercalyn]

Real life work is not done by volts or by amperes. Work is done by watts (amperes * volts) over time....

Small correction:

A watt is already a time unit, because an amp is already a time unit.

Which means watts/time would describe the changing rate of power and

watt-hours would describe a total amount of power consumed.

[Harvester66]

Wow finally some actual power outputs on the generators but How much do Redpower Machines uses?

[blackice504]

The maximum efficiency according to the wiki (Uh, I didn't actually say that) is one lava directly under the thermopile, four water blocks on the sides and the top is used to take energy out.

wait a sec on the thermal pile you have the 4 sides 2 of those sides have a blue dot at the base of the texture the other 2 have a red dot, so it would be 2 sides water, 2 sides lava?

the top and bottom are used to stack them or collect power

[Wendo]

Nope, the dots don't mean anything. Just there to confuse you :)

[blackice504]

well it works.

[Wendo]

well yes, it works, but it's not the most efficient since you've got 200 heat and 50 cold, where as a lava underneath and water on all 4 sides is 100 heat and 100 cold and thermopiles max out at 100 of each, anymore and they become unstable/less efficient

[Teraku]

Small correction:

A watt is already a time unit, because an amp is already a time unit.

Which means watts/time would describe the changing rate of power and

watt-hours would describe a total amount of power consumed.

Watts are not a time unit. Watt/h and KW/h is a time unit.

[Portablejim]

Watts are not a time unit. Watt/h and KW/h is a time unit.

Fairly sure Mercalyn is correct (unless I am confused by the term "time unit"). Watt is already a rate, so Watt/h is the change in power consumption.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt#Confusion_of_watts.2C_watt-hours.2C_and_watts_per_hour

[Silent]

I'm feeling like I need to pull out my physics exam notes :P

[Mercalyn]

Fairly sure Mercalyn is correct (unless I am confused by the term "time unit"). Watt is already a rate, so Watt/h is the change in power consumption.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt#Confusion_of_watts.2C_watt-hours.2C_and_watts_per_hour

Thank you.

I know it seems backwards but this is simply a misconception. The scientific mind is programmed to think anything per time is a time unit, and without it it is not. An amp is how many coulombs of electrons pass through a point in the wire in one second(there is your "per second" you may be looking for).

And watts per hour is the equivalent of saying miles per hour per hour.