GregTech 5/Electricity

Since version 5.0 (for Minecraft 1.7.2) GregTech has its own Energy System since GregoriusT was not satisfied with IC2 Experimental's Energy System.

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The reasons of why I removed compatibility to the IC² Enet are that Cable Loss doesn't work, that the Network doesn't have Packets anymore and that it switched from Integer to Double (what is horrible for larger Energy Storages). Not to mention that it is very hard to have control over Energy flow without constantly registering and unregistering TileEntities.

— GregoriusT

Voltage and Amperage

GregTech uses the terms Voltage (V) and Amperage (A) to describe its new Power system. One "Amp" is roughly the same as one EU Packet from IC2, and "Voltage" is the size of that packet.

EU/t is the total EU received. For example, if a machine receives one 32V packet and another 24V packet, the total EU/t received is 32 + 24 = 56 EU/t.

Unlike the IC2 energy system, all GregTech energy-interacting blocks have limits on both the Voltage and the Amperage they can interact with.

Different machine blocks accept and emit different Amperages.

• GregTech Transformers will input 4A and output 1A if used to step-up Voltages; they will input 1A and output 4A if used to step-down.
• Battery Buffers input 2A per Battery and output 1A per Battery.
• Battery Chargers input 8A per Battery and output 4A per Battery.
• Chest Buffers and Super Buffers accept 2A.
• Energy Hatches accept 2A input.
• Mass Fabricators accept 10A input.
• Microwave Energy Transmitters accept 3A input.
• Monster Repellators, Pumps, and Teleporters accept 2A input.
• All other EU accepting machine blocks accept at least 1A, depending on recipe: The amperage is equal to twice the recipe's EU usage, divided by the machine's voltage input, rounded down and added to 1. This 1A in case if you don't have full a machine energy buffer.
  • An LV Centrifuge performing a 5 EU recipe accepts 1A
  • An LV Chemical Reactor performing a 30EU recipe accepts 2A
  • An LV Arc Furnace performing a 96EU recipe accepts 7A
• Generators output 1A.

You do need to be careful when trying to power machines:

• Machines that get a higher Voltage than they can handle explode. Machines will not receive voltage until they need it, so the machine may not actually explode until it begins working!
• Excess Amperes fed into machines have no effect as long as the voltage is below the machines' limit. A machine will not draw current unless it needs power, and it will not draw fractions of an ampere. This makes machines self-regulating with regards to power.

Machines and recipes each have voltage tiers. The tier of a Multiblock Machine is determined by its Energy Hatches. Machine and recipe tiers do interact, and must be paid attention to.

• If a recipe has a minimum required voltage within a higher tier than that of the machine, the recipe cannot be carried out.
• If a recipe has a minimum required voltage within the same tier as the machine, the recipe functions normally.
• If a recipe has a minimum required voltage within a lower tier than that of the machine, the recipe is overclocked. Overclocked recipes are carried out at double normal speed, double normal total energy, and thus quadruple normal energy per tick.

Recipes can be overclocked multiple times if a machine is more than one tier above a recipe's tier.

GregTech has 10 Voltage Tiers as of version 5.0.

Note: ULV Tier counts as Tier 0.

Short	Full	Maximum Voltage
ULV	Ultra Low Voltage	8
LV	Low Voltage	32
MV	Medium Voltage	128
HV	High Voltage	512
EV	Extreme Voltage	2048
IV	Insane Voltage	8192
LuV	Ludicrous Voltage	32768
ZPMV	ZPM Voltage	131072
UV	Ultimate Voltage	524288
MaxV	Maximum Voltage	2147483647

Cables and Loss

Given that GregTech has its own power system now, you will need to use GT cables for powering GT machines. Do note that the only machine capable of accepting IC2 EU in GT is the Transformer (Not to be confused with the IC2 Transformer).

All GT Cables have a max Voltage, max Amperage and a Loss:

• Cables that get packets higher than their maximum Voltage will catch fire and melt.
• Cables that have more Amperes travelling through them than their maximum Amperage limit will catch fire and melt.
  Do note that packets can rebound. Even if the logical path that a packet dictates that EU should not travel in that direction, you should not take for granted that your cables will not have some stray EU packets travelling through them.
• The loss of a cable is per Block a EU package travels.
  For example a 32V package is sent trough a Tin Cable which has a loss of 1EU per block to a machine 8 blocks away.
  After 8 blocks of cables the 32V Package is down to 24V when it arrives at the machine. Should the machine need for example 30EU/t to operate. A second package sent in the same tick is needed every 4 Ticks. Thus a 2A supply is needed for the machine with this setup.
  Cable losses are applied to each EU Package, netting you a 2x power loss.

Each Material has 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x 12x and 16x uninsulated Wires and 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x and 12x Insulated Cables.

Do note that Uninsulated Wires have 2x the loss as Insulated Cables.

Here is an example:

• A 1x Tin Cable can handle 1A and 32V at a loss of 1V/m. This means that the EU packet can travel 32 blocks before it dies.
• A 1x Tin Wire can handle 1A and 32V at a loss of 2V/m. In this case, the EU can travel 16 blocks only.

Below is a table of the current properties of various types of cables in GregTech:

Material	Max Voltage	1x Insulated Cable Max Amp	Loss/m/amp/tick in EU	Efficiency compared to Tin Wire	Length until 0 Power	Most efficient number of Cables between Batteries
Tin	32	1	1	1.00	32	5.906
Cobalt	32	2	2	0.50	16	0
Lead	32	2	2	0.50	16	0
Zinc	32	1	1	1.00	32	5.906
Soldering Alloy	32	1	1	1.00	32	5.906
Iron	128	2	3	1.33	43	3.970
Nickel	128	3	3	1.33	43	3.970
Cupronickel	128	2	3	1.33	43	3.970
Copper	128	1	2	2.00	64	9.151
Annealed Copper	128	1	1	4.00	128	23.12
Kanthal	512	4	3	5.33	171	20.81
Gold	512	3	2	8.00	256	34.48
Electrum	512	2	2	8.00	256	34.48
Silver	512	1	1	16.00	512	74.96
Blue Alloy	512	2	1	16.00	512	74.96
Nichrome	2048	3	4	16.00	512	50.63
Steel	2048	2	2	32.00	1024	109.8
Black Steel	2048	3	2	32.00	1024	109.8
Titanium	2048	4	2	32.00	1024	109.8
Tungstensteel	2048	3	2	32.00	1024	109.8
Tungsten	2048	4	2	32.00	1024	109.8
Aluminium	2048	1	1	64.00	2048	227.8
Osmium	8192	4	2	128.00	4096	330.2
Graphene*/**	8192	1	1	256.00	8192	671.7
Osmium	8192	4	2	128.00	4096	330.2
Platinum	8192	2	1	256.00	8192	671.7
Tungstensteel (GT5U)	8192	3	2	128.00	4096	330.2
Tungsten (GT5U)	8192	2	2	128.00	4096	330.2
HSS-G	32768	4	2	512.00	16384	966.5
Naquadah	32768	4	1	1,024.00	32768	1948.8
Niobium-Titanium	32768	4	2	512.00	16384	966.5
Vanadium-Gallium	32768	4	2	512.00	16384	966.5
Yttrium Barium Cuprate	32768	4	4	256.00	8192	475.2
Naquadah (GT5U)	131072	2	2	2048.00	65,536.00	227.8
Naquadah Alloy (GT5U)	524288	2	4	4,096.00	131072	-
Duranium (GT5U)	524288	1	8	2,048.00	65536	-
Red Alloy	8	1	0	inf.	inf.	inf.
Superconductor*	231-1	4	1	228	231-1	N/A

(*No insulated Cable version) (**No crafting recipe yet)

Also any GT Block and Battery outputting Energy has an energy loss on output. This means there is no such thing as lossless cables in GregTech.

A power outputting machine will take (8 * 4 ^ Tier) + (2 ^ Tier) EU from its storage and output only (8 * 4 ^ Tier) EU.
The energy lost is therefore (2 ^ Tier).

An example:
Say a turbine is supposed to output 32V.
output = 32 = (8 * 4 ^ Tier).
Solving for Tier gives you 1. The energy loss will then be (2 ^ Tier). In this case it is 2.

So the turbine takes 34 EU from its storage, voids 2 EU per packet and then outputs 32 EU.

Here is a table documenting some of the cable properties in GregTech:

Tier	Output	Loss	Loss in %	Energy used
ULV	8	1	12.5	9
LV	32	2	6.25	34
MV	128	4	3.125	132
HV	512	8	1.5625	520
EV	2048	16	0.78125	2064
IV	8192	32	0.390625	8224
LuV	32768	64	0.1953125	32832
ZPMV	131072	128	0.09765625	131200
UV	524288	256	0.048828125	524544

Optimal Cable length between Batteries for maximum efficiency.

The EU loss of GregTech Cables and Batteries scales linearly with the number of sequential Cables and the number of Batteries, but since voltage is topped up at every battery there will be a loss that is increasing exponentially for every identical segment of a Battery and x-number of Cable links. This exponential loss from more batteries also reduces the impact of the linear loss, but this ofc comes at the cost of more exponential loss. This means that there must exist a sweet spot, because with short segments the extra exponential loss of more segments will be more detrimental to the efficiency than the linear loss from making each segment longer, for long segments this will be reversed. So lets do the math!

Lets first define our terms, a segment is the length of a Battery plus a number of sequential Cables. The efficiency of such a segment will be (8 * 4^T - (D - 1)L) / (8 * 4^T + 2^T). T is the tier (ULV is tier 0, LV is tier 1 and so on). L is the loss of the cable in voltage/meter/ampere. D is the distance of the segment, so the length of the Cables plus the battery.

But this is no good since we want to figure out the optimal length when there is an element of exponential decline that we haven't accounted for. We do this by making an expression of how much efficiency we get in each single block if there was a uniform exponential decline over the whole segment. This turns out to be ((8 * 4^T - (D - 1)L) / (8 * 4^T + 2^T))^(1 / D).

We now take the derivative of that expression with respect to D to get how the efficiency changes when we change the length of the segments, when we do this we get such a ghastly monstrosity that not even WolframAlpha can deal with it algebraically. But this wont stop us on our quest for efficiency! Lets solve it numerically!

Step 1: go to http://www.wolframalpha.com/ because we are lazy. Step 2: Enter "(d/dD) ((8 * 4^T - (D - 1)L) / (8 * 4^T + 2^T))^(1 / D) = 0, T=<Insert tier here>, L=<Insert Cable loss here>". It will solve the problem numerically for each separate case. So if you want to know the optimal length of Annealed Copper Cable between your MV Batteries, you enter T=2, L=1 and it will give you the optimal length of each segment (This includes the battery!). In the case of Annealed Copper Cable this turns out to be about 24.1, so 23 cables between each battery is optimal. For more information on other cables, see the table above.

Machine explosions

Using GregTech machines without thought and care can be fairly unsafe. If a machine gets contact with rain on any of the 6 sides of the block, it can catch fire. If a machine gets lit on fire, it can explode.

Energy conversions

GregTech machines does not accept EU from IndustrialCraft² cables and some other mods EU powered blocks does not accept GregTech cables, thus there is the need to convert IC2 EU and GT5 EU back and forth.

To convert IC2 EU into GT5 EU, simply connect (read put directly adjacent) a GT transformer input to an IC2 Energy Source output side. This means connecting the output dot of a IC2 transformer/storage block to the input dot of a GT transformer.

To convert GT5 EU into IC2 EU, simply connect GT cables to IC2 blocks.

Example screenshots of IC2 and GT5 EU conversions: