Tekkit Tips and Tricks 2: Power supply

2. Power supply
Your power supply in tekkit is very important as your soon-to-be-built machines would be running on electricity. In industrialcraft, electricity is measured in EU. The voltage of any wire is measured in EU/t which is EU per tick. At 32 EU/t it is a low voltage current, 128 EU/t is a medium voltage current and 512EU/t is high voltage

Most of the machines we will be using now would work only at low voltage which is fine because you would not be using too complex machinery at this point in time.

We would be covering a few things in this post:
-Getting the power
-Using the power
-Storing the power

Getting the power
There are a number of ways to get energy in tekkit. These would be things like a generator, solar panels or water mills. I shall be going though each of them fully.

Solar Panels are an infinite source of energy which I highly recommend using. To work, it needs to be under direct sunlight and it needs to be day time. It does not store any energy so I recommend hooking it up with the machine or a storage block so as to not waste electricity.

Water mills is an infinite source that can be used underground, thus, I suggest using them to power your super-hidden base. The only downside is that it does not give a large amount of electricity when unmanned but when it is, it makes 1000 EU per water block.
To leave it unmanned, dig a 3x3x3 area and place the water mill in the center. dump water on top of it and connect it to the machine.

Geothermal generators convert lava into electricity. Each block of lava is worth 20 thousand EU. Very worth it as a few buckets or cells of lava would last a long time. I recommend using this if you have access to the nether for lava.

Generators convert burnable items into electricity. The longer something burns, the more electricity produced. A stick makes 250 EU. Each item which it could smelt would give 500 EU. Useful as a backup to your machines. Not recommend to use as a primary energy system.

These would be all the energy systems we would be using. All of these are quite good to power the number of machines.

Using the power
To use all your power, connect your energy source to the machine. This can be done by placing the machine next to the energy source. It can be underneath, above or on the side but the only thing that matters is that it has a face in direct contact with the source. You can alternatively connect some wire running from the source connecting to the machine. This allows you to keep your source slightly away from the machines. Be warned that you would lose small amounts of energy when it passes though the wires due to resistance. When you place the macerator down, you can right-click it to see this interface.

This interface has 7 boxes which you should taken note of. They would be all the boxes excluding your inventory. The most top left box is the input, you are to place all your ores in this box. The box slightly below and to the right of the input slot is the output slot. You would be retrieving all of your ore dust from here. The box below the input slot is the battery slot. If your power source is out, you are able to place a charged battery into this slot to keep it running on the power inside the battery. The 4 slots on the right are the upgrade slots. We would not be using the upgrades because they are a higher tier luxury.

Notice how, in between input slot and battery slot is a electricity sign. This is the amount of energy stored in the machine. The symbol would be red when fully charged. For the macerator, it stores 800 EU, the same amount of electricity it cost to macerate 1 item without any upgrades. The cost for each machine would differ slightly from one another, and change even more when upgrades are put in.

Storing the power
Having and using the power is good but what would happen if you rely on solar panels and it is night time? the only way you can continue working is if you have a back-up source or a storage box! A storage box would store electricity for you so that you can use it at a later date. It is also able to charge your batteries if your source is far away. There are 3 types of storage boxes, they would be the BatBox, the MFE and the MFSU. The bat box is the cheapest to make and gives out a 32 EU/t voltage, low enough so that your machines would be able to use it. To make this, you would need 3 RE-batteries, 1 copper cable and 5 wooden planks. Please note that the batteries do not need to be fully charged and can be crafted when the battery is fully uncharged. The only thing you would not know how to make is the RE-battery. If you search how to make a battery using "R", it would not show the recipe. This is because it uses different item IDs so it does not connect the two item IDs. This is not that important to you and you do not need to know this. to find out how to make it, search "RE-battery" in the search bar at the bottom of the inventory screen to find it and look at its recipe. It cost 4 tin, 2 redstone dust and 1 insulated copper cable. A battery can store 10 000 EU so this means you get a profit of an extra 10 000 EU when you make a bat box. When placing a bat box you would see that there is an orange dot on 1 side of the bat box. This is the out put area while all the other sides are input sides. If you place wires from the output, you can connect it to your machines and allow it to be powered. I suggest placing the bat box in between the energy sources and the machines.

This is the way you would start with industrialcraft and machines. Be warned that if you place the machine down, you would not be able to pick it back up unbroken using a pickaxe. You would be needing a bronze wrench to that and would soon be covered.