Power Trouble: Two Energy Bridges & Low EU/T.

[blsmith2112]

Edit: I believe my problem was the LV Consumer instead of a MV/HV consumer/producer. While the issue has definitely gotten better, I'd like to know if theres more I can do to increase the amount of power being wirelessly sent.

Original Post:

Three Assets:

1. Quarry
   
2. Base
   
3. Power Plant
   

No assets are physically connected. The power plant currently contains three Medium Voltage Solar Arrays. The Solar Arrays transport power to the quarry and base by way of phased conductive pipe and an energy bridge (respectively).

The Problem:

• The "base" MFE hardly brings in much power per-tick. It takes over a minute to charge a single 30k EU Jetpack. We previously had three LV Solar Arrays exclusively powering the base alone and that was MUCH faster.
  

The setup:

• Power Plant: 3 Medium Voltage Solar Arrays > 3x Glass Fibre Cables > MFSU > 1x Glass Fibre Cable > IC2 LV Consumer > Energy Bridge > BC Producer > 1x Wooden Conductive Pipe > 1x Golden Conductive Pipe > Phased Conductive Pipe (Freq. 10, two outputs)
  
• Quarry: Phased Conductive Pipe (Freq. 10, Input) to 4 simultaneously running quarries via 5-6 Golden Conductive Pipes. (130 blocks or so from power station)
  
• Base: Phased Conductive Pipe (Freq. 10, Input) > 1x Wooden Conductive Pipe > 1x Golden Conductive Pipe > BC Consumer > Energy Bridge > IC2 LV Producer > 5x Glass Fibre Cable > MFE. Further (100 blocks or so to power station)
  

Am I doing anything noticeably wrong? Having three LV Solar Arrays exclusively power our base was much faster than 3 MV Solar Arrays running 4 quarries and the base. Is there a limit on the EU/t / MJ/t on something that I don't know about? Any sort of power conversion loss with the converters? Are the quarries an EU/MJ sink? If conversion is the problem, is there a more efficient way to teleport EUs?

[Piecoma]

I had issues similar, not 100% sure but I believe there used to be an HV version of the wooden conductive pipe that connected to the BC producer that is no longer available. Read conversation below You-tube video

[Industrial Miner]

That could be the case. Only two addons that I know of have a HV power pipe. Transformers (IC2) and AdvancedPowerSystems(BC). The latter hasn't been updated since 1.2.5 I guess.

However the Transformers addon has been updated to the latest? version of IC2.

http://forum.industrial-craft.net/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=5789

[blsmith2112]

Very interesting. Thanks guys.

[plowmanplow]

Other items of note:

• You do not need to go into that second wooden pipe or the golden one. Just go Wooden -> Phased
  
• You do not need to bring each of those arrays in on a separate line. Just "flower" them up together and bring them in on one cable run
  
• Suggestion: Ditch the pipes all together and use an Redstone Energy Cell and Energy Tesseracts. Unlike pipes, they don't blow up or draw power when not being used
  

[blsmith2112]

I corrected the system and now it seems to be working much better. Speaking of drawing power, these three MV Solar Arrays generate 192/t, yet the MFSU seems to export 70.5/t and the IC2 HV Consumer says its bringing in 141EU/t (double what the MFSU says). Why would it only bring in 141EU/t instead of the full 192/t? I even tried moving this stuff and plugging it into my 230EU/t Nuclear Power Plant and the Consumer still says its bringing in 141EU/t... Sorry if this is confusing. I can gather some images or perhaps a video tomorrow.

[plowmanplow]

Remember that the bridge will report what is being brought in based on what is being sent out. If you are only using 56.4 MJ/t then the bridge only needs 141 EU/t to keep its buffer full so that's all it will ask for. The power converters are very intelligent in their power usage/distribution. If you combine them with Thermal Expansion cells, conduits and tesseracts the bridge will stop pulling power altogether when the MJ side doesn't have machines actively consuming power.

[blsmith2112]

That sounds great. But, the power is sent to another place with a second energy bridge that converts it back to EU. However, I have a second wooden conductive pipe that connecting to the receiving phased conduction pipe, which leads to several MJ machines, and once those are full the power bunches up in the pipe and explodes.

[theprolo]

Switch to Thermal Expansion Redstone Energy Conduits and Tesseracts. They don't explode, get overloaded and, knowing BC, will lag a lot less. They also transmit Buildcraft power, by the way.

[blsmith2112]

Am I doing something wrong? The tesseract is transmitting power successfully using BC pipes, but when connecting the tesseract to several Redstone Energy Conduits directly into the objects that are suppose to utilize the power, they aren't recharging.

[theprolo]

With Redstone Energy Conduits, you need to right click them with a Buildcraft wrench or Crescent Hammer to change them from outputting to inputting. When the arrow is orange and pointing out, that's the output mode (Which you'll want the one connected to the tesseract to be). When it's blue and pointing in, it's input mode. This only affects machines and stuff, and the conduits will transmit power regardless of mode.

[Industrial Miner]

Just make sure that you CAN'T have just one energy conduit to take input AND output at once. So you'll always need to use atleast 2 conduits.

[blsmith2112]

Aha! I see now. I didn't realize I needed to use a wrench. Just to be clear, the entire conductive pipe network needs to consist of conduits in order to be effective, right? Industrial, you mentioned that I'll "at least need two conduits," so does that mean I can use a different pipe in between?

[Industrial Miner]

No, I mean that you will need one energy conduit as input and one for output. And no, energy conduits won't connect to any other pipe.

[blsmith2112]

Ah okay just making sure. It seems to be working great now. Thanks much.

[banker247]

i read somewhere that energy bridge soaks up 70eu/t per connection when wireless transmitting and not being directly next to the unit taking the converted energy in my experience this happens from each face of the bridge - i have 550eu/t coal plant hooked up to 4 quarries and its drawing 400+ eu/t each face of the bridge puts out only a certain amount of eu so i have 3 phased pipes hanging off it

[Ovidius-Mindcrafter]

Remember that the bridge will report what is being brought in based on what is being sent out. If you are only using 56.4 MJ/t then the bridge only needs 141 EU/t to keep its buffer full so that's all it will ask for. The power converters are very intelligent in their power usage/distribution. If you combine them with Thermal Expansion cells, conduits and tesseracts the bridge will stop pulling power altogether when the MJ side doesn't have machines actively consuming power.

The energy bridges only seem to demand about 141 EU/tick, even when using an HV consumer and when the the receiving end of the MJ could use much more than is being produced.

The key is to add additional wooden pipes out of the BC Producer.

For example, you can have:

MFSU -> HV Consumer -> Energy Bridge -> BC Producer -> Wooden Pipe (conductive) -> Gold Conductive Pipe -> Phased Conductive

That will get you the 141 EU/t into the consumer.

However, if you add another conductive wooden pipe out of another face of the BC Producer that connects in to the same Gold Conductive Pipe, you will double the EU usage and also double the MJ output.

You can keep adding wooden conductive pipes to each of the 5 available faces to continually increase the output.

Once that special HV Conductive Pipe was removed, the regular conductive wooden pipe became the bottleneck as it could not handle more than 141 EU/t - that is why adding additional wooden conductive pipes will net you more EU input and more MJ output.

Hope this helps.