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Hello YouTubers. Joshua724 here. In a previous video, I talked about how I was powering my
house with solar panels.
It took a lot of solar panels just to counter the amount of lighting I would need to keep
mobs from spawning inside. As such, I started considering if there were alternative means
by which I could power those lights.
One source I knew could provide more than enough power if configured properly was nuclear power.
I did another video where I just experimented with the various IC devices in hopes of getting something to work.
However, the more I was trying to get everything to work, the more I realized the available information was lacking.
So, I'll be doing a video just on how to do IndustrialCraft.
Now, before I go any further, I felt it necessary to make an official statement about how I feel about nuclear energy (this is about as serious as I plan on getting).
An argument can be made against nuclear energy in light of the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki or even the nuclear power plant disasters that have happened over the years.
However, even before all that, I am reminded of a filmed statement J. Robert Oppenheimer made after the Trinity test.
We knew the world would not be the same.
Few people laughed, few people cried, most people were silent.
I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita.
Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form
and says, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.
If we were to take 3 of the most well known power generating systems, solar, coal, and nuclear, only two of the three can be touched by bare hands.
Nuclear energy is dangerous even in it's most basic form. However, when used properly, it can be a good source of electricity.
Mind you, about 1% of the nuclear energy released in a fission reaction is captured to create heat.
About 33% of that heat is converted to steam energy.
But, even with that low conversion rate, it is better than most other methods of energy production.
As such, I am neither a strong supporter nor strongly against it.
Now, as for how to use IndustrialCraft, I found that my knowledge of electronics would come in very handy.
IC stores energy in the form of Energy Units, or EUs.
The best real world example of this would be a Joule. One joule can be defined as such:
The work required to move 1 electric charge through 1 volt. This relationship can be used to define the volt.
The work required to produce 1 watt of power for 1 second. This relationship can be used to define the watt.
The EU measurement is energy unit per tick, or EU/t. The real world equivalent being wattage.
Minecraft normally operates at about 20 ticks per second. As such, the rate of EU/sec is 20x EU/t.
You need enough EU power to power all of your IC devices. They won't incur damage if you don't have enough power. They just won't work.
However, you cannot have too much power on your IC devices or they will explode.
You could, for all intensive purposes, hook up enough power generating devices to directly power whatever IC device you are attempting to power. But, that is inefficient.
The most efficient way to use your power system is:
1) Create a farm (or reactor) of your EU generating device
2) Place an EU storage device between your farm and the device you plan on powering (this stores up energy, which is useful if you use a solar farm)
3) Depending on the power output of your storage device, you can, either, wire your device directly to your storage device
or use a transformer to step down the power output enough so that your device doesn't explode.
One thing I thought I could do was place a power generating device down, connect a wire to it, then all the other power generating devices just needed to touch it.
I believe there are a few mods that can do that. For example: With BuildCraft, you can place a pump down, place an engine next to it, then place a lever down, and it just powers it.
IC has been designed so that every power generating device needs to be wired individually to capture it's energy and store it, except the generator. I'll go into that later.
Depending on how much power your generator is generating, you will need to construct your power distribution system to handle the amount of power you plan on generating.
The storage devices can be plugged in from any side. But, they only have one output side.
Now, I'll show you how to arrange these with the default texture pack due to the fact that,
if you are having problems trying to figure out what going on with your favorite texture pack,
you can, at least, fall back to the default one for reference.
Now, we have a energy generating device here: a solar panel; a energy containing device: a BatBox;
and an energy step-down device: a transformer. Which will then hook into this energy using device: a Luminator.
Now, we can basically have this HV cable, or any of the cables available in the IndustrialCraft mod,
coming out of any side of the energy generating device. It will not matter.
Although, you want to place it on an adjoining block to avoid bringing up the GUI.
Now, this is the output side. The cable can go on any side of this container. However, it needs to go like this
so that the energy has some place to go out of the box.
Now, the transformer, this is where it will go in. It can go out on any side of the transformer. But, it has to go in at this point right here.
On that side. I say this only because a number of Wikis have said that you need to place it where the three dots are.
But, I haven't found any transformers with indicating dots.
And now it is in place. Now, we connect the solar panel to the batbox, it is gathering energy.
We connect the batbox to the transformer and...actually, the default for the transformer is to step-down and it only steps up with redstone.
It can, also, be fixed to only do step-down or fixed to only do step-up.
Now, we connect the light...let me set this to night...and there we go. See, it is properly configured.
Depending on how much power your generator is generating, you will need to construct your power distribution system to handle the amount of power you plan on generating.
As for how energy can be transformed, I have a theory about how this can work. There is a way to verify power output on a cable called an EU reader.
But, as of IC2-2.0.265, the IC group has announced that that part of the mod is temporarily broken.
As such, you can only verify the EU generating by placing 1 of the 4 EU storage devices at the output.
If you have an energy source of 512 EU/t: If you step it down to 128 EU/t, you will only be able to power devices capable of 128 EU/t,
but the power will come faster, possibly making it easier to power more 128 EU/t devices at once.
If you step it up to 2048 EU/t, you will be able to power devices capable of 2048 EU/t,
but the power won't come as fast, making it difficult to power more than one 2048 EU/t devices.
Most of the "every day use" items in IC don't need any more than 32 EU/t of energy.
As such, it is best to take advantage of the transformers to step the EU down enough
so that you don't blow up the device you are trying to power or, possibly, the room you have placed the device in.
While messing with one of the generator types, I found it useful to create a power grid.
Basically, after creating my solar farm, I wired all the solar panels to go into a storage unit.
That would make it so that I could store up energy for later use.
I could then wire that to go into my house and step it down with transformers.
However, I am considering making a power room where all my power generating devices can be wired into
and I can then just step them down via transformers into appropriate EU levels which can then go out to whatever I plan on powering.
Now, these are all the power generating sources in IndustrialCraft.
Over here, we have a basic generator of which, the way it runs is you put wood in it and it will output power.
And, as you can see, it is going up. Now, it takes a lot of energy to get enough power going.
Over here, we have a water mill. And the way this works is you put water in there and it will output it to the EU storage device.
Now, supposedly, this can work by having it submerged in water. However, I tried that and it wasn't giving me any success.
Although, I think I'll try it one more time as I was having trouble with Minecraft earlier and discontinued my experimenting.
So, it doesn't have to be completely submerged. But, it is sort of dribbling in. No pun intended.
Now, supposedly, a number of these can be clustered together and it will work more efficiently.
It definitely shot straight up. But, not as efficiently as some other power sources I'm going to show you.
Over here, we have a windmill and the best way to show you how it works...
You, basically, need to have it in a position that it is not obstructed and is capable of catching wind.
And it's generating power.
Over here, we have a solar power cell and that's what I'm running my house on.
Also, if you're going to generate power from a device, you need to run a cable from every device you place to the power storage device.
As you can see here, I have to have each one of these individually connected. Now, they can have 1 cable that connects to 3 at once.
But, they all have to be connected to that one pipe.
Over here, we have a geothermal generator and how this basically works is it needs lava in order to run.
Now, over here, we have what I would, probably, consider the most dangerous, is nuclear power.
Well, first of all, this whole thing...well, I guess I could show you by the one I've got over here.
I have in the center the nuclear core which is, basically, the thing that looks like it has an oven.
And it can be surrounded by 6 chambers by which that is how big it can get.
Looks like it's mostly drained out now. But, you can basically see that it works.
Now, here we have the EU storage units and transformers.
Starting from the left, this is a BatBox. It is capable of holding 40k EU, it can only take 32 EU/t max, and it outputs only 32 EU/t.
This is a CESU. It can hold 300k EU, it can take 128 EU/t max, and it outputs 128 EU/t.
This is a MFE. It can hold 4M EU, it can take 512 EU/t max, and it outputs 512 EU/t.
This is a MFSU. It can hold 40M EU, it can take 2048 EU/t max, and it outputs 2048 EU/t.
This is a low voltage transformer. And all of these transformers, in general, can go up or down in voltage.
But, they can only do it at certain levels.
The LV-Transformer can go from a high of 128 to a low of 32 or reverse that.
This is the MV-Transformer. It can go from a high of 512 to a low of 128 or reverse that.
This is the HV-Transformer. It can go from a high of 2048 to a low of 512 or reverse that.
This is the EV-Transformer. It can go from a high of 8192 to a low of 2048.
This is my current setup right now. I started out with just these first 3 solar panels.
Well, I started out just trying to figure out how to wire them so that they were all working efficiently.
And eventually, as I was getting more lighting in the house, I discovered that I needed to have more solar panels
in order to get that much power working.
Now, this current setup right here that I have...it is the MFSU that I'm using.
And, originally, I was using the MFE. But, when I started experimenting with the nuclear reactor, the...
Well, check this out. I had to have a 512 EU unit here just so that it wouldn't explode on me.
That's how much power this nuclear reactor is capable of emitting.
However, it still scares the heck out of me due to the fact that it is capable of exploding if you don't handle it properly.
Anyways, everything is basically going down to this. A sort of makeshift power grid which will then go inside.
As you can see, there is the output port, and there is the input port.
And in here...because I had to have a transformer there...
Actually, before, it was just the MFE when it was just the solar panels. But, I had to have it as a transformer due to the fact that
I have a MFSU out there to take in the nuclear generator and the solar panels.
Which then steps it down just enough that it comes out as 32 EU/t for powering all the lights.
And here we have an induction furnace which can, basically, work the same way as a regular furnace except that
It doesn't actually need fire or anything to work. It works through induction and it works twice as fast.
This is a microwave of which we can...I've never tried iron before in this thing.
Well, actually, this is a good example of what happens when you try to do something that the device isn't mean to do.
This, actually, happened in the over room over here. And, this is pretty much the same devastation.
So, hopefully, this is a good warning for everyone who wants to use this mod. Be very careful about how you manage it.
Or you'll end up with a hole in your house.