Power Generation Methods/Designs

[PompanoZombie]

Hello Tekkiteers. Let me first start this off with a question. When you first started playing Tekkit 1.6.4 and you were used to Tekkit 1.5.2 or you have never played Tekkit before, did you have trouble with power to start off with? Im sure atleast half of you have. So, im dedicating this thread to showing off your methods and designs of power generation. This is also to help the new Tekkit players find a few easy power generation methods early game so they can hurry on and get on with their Minecraft lives. So wether its beginning, cheap, simple power generation; or if its end game, complicated, resource demanding power generation (COUGH COUGH Curunirs "The Core" design) please post it on here using pics, elaborate drawings using letters and numbers, or a very detailed description. Be sure to TRY to include: amount of power being generated; resource cost; what your intentions are for it (ie. powering your base lights; ME Network powering; ore doubling factory powering; MFR Laser drill powering etc.) and if you recommend trying to build it (COUGH COUGH Curunirs "The Core" design again). So guys and gals, Tekkiteers alike, show off your power generation methods! Be proud! And please don't be shy, dont make me feel like an idiot for starting this thread for nothing..... pwease?

[Digdug83]

I actually only used three power generation models to get where I am at the moment. When I started I constructed 2 steam dynamos and fed them coal/charcoal (whichever I had handy at the time) to power a handful of basic TE machines. Once I had the resources I produced a battery (I believe it was 12 or 16) of magmatic dynamos fed by an ender thermic pump in the nether. This allowed me to set up a rudimentary ME network and expand my TE machines to handle automated quarry processing. With 2 full size quarries in storage I moved on to my current solution, which is a 12x12x12 passively cooled yellorium reactor. It took quite a while to get enough cryotheum for it (640000mB) but it was certainly worth it. The reactor itself consists of 36 fuel rods (10m tall obviously) grouped together in a 6x6 pattern and centered inside the reactor. Currently their control rods are set to 80% and it produces just shy of 50000 RF/t. This powers my base machinery, farms, quarry, and two laser drills.

[PompanoZombie]

That is basically what I use. Except my Yellorium reactors are a bit different. I use a 9 by 9 by 9 Reactor with 1 block spacing inbetween the fuel rods. And just cuz i didn't feel like making plenty of enderpears or cryotheum, i used Destablized Redstone. 12 buckets to be exact. Outputs a solid 26.4k RF/t. I don't ever mess with the control rod settings. I should look into that. But my reactor would be ALOT more efficient if I used Liquid Ender or Cryotheum...... 

Testing will be done......

[Digdug83]

Your fuel reactivity is going to be lower (less efficient) if you have the rods separated. Smash them together for better fuel consumption rates.

[Curunir]

Observe that while lumping rods together in a Yellorium Reactor is recommended because of the increased fertility/reactivity, it also increases cooling needs. So only go that route when you have something better than water to fill in. Gelid Cryotheum is the king of coolants, with a very close second rank for Resonant Ender. Somebody once found that in small setups, Resonant Ender may even be better than Cryo. Do yourself a favour and use Pumps and Floodgates (from Buildcraft) to fill and drain coolants.

 

Other than that, running a wood-producing autofarm to feed massive racks of Steam Dynamos might have a certain Steampunk flavour to it. If you find a large oil deposit to exploit, "Block B" of your power plant might then go Dieselpunk with Compression Dynamos. The water feed for those two alone should be impressive.

 

And maybe you will be the first to figure out how to actually make Reactant Dynamos useful.

[AetherPirate]

Now I'm inspired make a Steampunk power facility. Coal, dynamos, gritty textures and an airship. And a jukebox playing Abney Park.

Edited August 6, 2014 by AetherPirate

[jakalth]

The steampunk route.  Definately a bit of investment to get it running, but it's all renewable resources to keep it powered, once you have the auto tree farms running well.  And, the whole power setup is a fairly good time user and a rather enjoyable build.  Several possible ways to make it work so there is room to experiment.  Steve's carts is an interesting, if a bit maintenance heavy at times, way to gather wood for charcoal.  At least as a small setup...

 

For end game setups, hmmm, big reactors for sure.  But I tend to start smaller then most.  I build a 7x7x3 passive cooled reactor with 5 fuel rods in a + shaped cluster and fire it up using resonant ender as a coolant, at least until I can get the 4 buckets of gelid cryothium needed to bring it to full power.  Produces over 2K RF/tick once it has gelid to keep it cool, and it runs at under 900C with all the control rods turned off.  More then enough power for my minimalistic needs.  If I end up needing more power, I usually have enough resources built up to make a turbine, a 9x9 turbine with 52 turbine blades and 24 blocks of enderium.  produces 15,544 RF/tick consistantly from the same reactor, converted to steam output. 

 

Yeah, Big reactors, when built really small, say 5x5x3 or smaller, seem to run better with resonant ender as their coolant.  At that small size, gelid cryothium tends to cool the reactor down too much, preventing it from getting hot enough to produce sufficient power.  The difference is small, maybe 5%, but in a tiny reactor, every little bit counts.

 

Option 2: Biofuel.  Figured out the solution to getting biofuel to actually be viable with it's new balance setup.  It requires using logistics pipes to control the number of each item in the bio reactors, or it just fills with 1 item and looses all efficiency.  the setup requires having at least 6 different automated farms of crops.  I usually go with carrots, potatoes, melons, pumpkins, oak saplings, and birch saplings.  Sometimes wheat for running livestock farms is also used to supply seeds.  Ink from squid is now quite slow, but still can be used as your sixth or seventh item in the bio reactors.  so I sometimes just build up large farms of those materials and wait untill I have 5 or 6 stacks of each item built up before turning on my bio reactors. I usually start with 2 bio reactors, wait for my resources to build up again and add a third, or even a fourth if the resource count keeps going up quickly enough.  The fuel gets pumped into a bank of biofuel generators, 5-6 generators per bio reactor.

Edited August 6, 2014 by jakalth

[Curunir]

There is an alternative to optimal Biofuel production. Just have a massive tree autofarm and feed the same kind of sapling into the BioReactor in extreme amounts. Who cares if it's inefficient?

Granted, without the Fluiduct exploit, you will really need enormous amounts to make enough Biofuel. And don't forget that the Biofuel Generator is way more efficient with the stuff than the Compression Dynamo is. It better should, considering it takes Blaze Rods to make one.

[PompanoZombie]

After reading all of these, I can't but help to feel that my 9 by 9 by 9 reactor design is the most efficient. At a solid 26,000 RF/t, and using only Destablized Redstone? I've done some testing before the beta and learned that at this size, resonant ender produces more RF/t than Destablized Redstone. I only tested this with half fuel inside the reactor. I max out my fuel this time in the Destabilzed Redstone 9 by 9 by 9 and i get over 26,000 RF/t. Just think of how much power might be produced if i used, say, Gelid Cryotheum. And this is all relatively cheap to make. I will definitely try reshaping the Fuel Rods and try different liquids cooling it, but i believe that this is probably one of the better routes to go until you get the tree farms set up and able to make Turbines (believe me this thing goes produces waste pretty dag on fast). I will keep yall posted on how it goes.

[Kezr]

And maybe you will be the first to figure out how to actually make Reactant Dynamos useful.

They are/were useful depending on wether you run recomended or latest. This is due to a bug where Gelid Cryotheum + Energized Glowstone can be used to make infinite Glowstone. Melt this in a Magma Crucible to get the liquid fuel. For the solid reactant, use Sugar, which can be easily powerfarmed with a Watering Can in an Autonomous Activator and a bunch of Terrain Smashers.

 

Sadly the Glowstone trick is fixed in the latest version, and I think the automated Wating Can trick has been broken in later versions of Extra Utilities.

[Prototype958]

Typically I start out with 2 Steam Dynamos powering my pulverizer/furnace. This time around I actually sat on those for way longer then I wanted because I couldn't find the mats I needed to upgrade. 

 

My personal preference for mid-end game power is Bio-Fuel so I typically skip anything in between and get up a single Bio-Reactor/Generator combo and a bunch of farms. Right now I have 4 different 3X3 tree farms, a big Pumpkin Patch, Cactus Farm as well as a Cocoa farm that's way too big and standard 5x5 Carrot, Potato and Wheat farms(Wheat is pretty much just to keep my Cow population up, I don't use the seeds in the Bio-Reactor as their yield is way too low). Between all this production I'm already able to keep my reactor full and max efficiency while running a pretty good sized quarry on top of my other production machines. 

 

I don't know if it's changed since I last played but I believe the ratio was ~8-10 Generators per Bio-Reactor so what I'm planning on doing once I've dug out my facility is to have Generator Stacks pumping into Tesseracts/Energy Cells, being fed bio fuel via Tesseracts linked to my Reactor farm which will be connected to my ME Network once I have that up and running.

 

Once I'm set on power with Bio-Fuel, I usually start playing around with nuclear power, more for fun than necessity. 

[Feekkee]

Do you use any Resonant Energy cells and fill up all the power from Big Reactors? How many? Or is there any other options to store alot of energy to not waste any resources for nothing?

[EvilOwl]

Do you use any Resonant Energy cells and fill up all the power from Big Reactors? How many? Or is there any other options to store alot of energy to not waste any resources for nothing?

Why do you want to store it. Just >control your reactor.