How to Build a Good EU P2P Power Spine

[blissful herald]

With 2.8 removing the biggest disadvantage of eu p2p (powerfailing on server/world startup), it has become a viable option for early game power transportation until lasers become necessary. I have personally used EU P2P to power my base since EV, and alot of my old infrastructure still relies on it. I thought I would write a quick guide of how my spine look(ed) like at the earlier tiers in case any other players out there also want to use EU P2P

--- LSC ---

EU P2P can be used before the LSC, but it doesn't really shine until you have access to a centralized energy storage. The LSC allows you to have multiple dynamo hatches of different tiers, which means a more modular and fine grained eu p2p spine.

You can create multiple P2P energy channels for each energy tier you would like.

For example, an LSC with a 4A EV, 4A IV, and 64A LuV dynamo hatch:

--- Moving EU to Machines ---

The main advantage to EU p2p in my opinion is its modularity, 2 machines right next to each other can have completely different energy requirements. EU p2p allows you to adjust the energy of each machine more finely at the cost of channels

To bind each machine to its respective p2p channel. I recommend using an advanced memory card set to “Bind to Input” mode. Then bind the p2p you place on the machines energy hatch to the proper energy channel. When you have alot of machines connected to the same energy channel, the one you want to bind to is the one labelled as “GT EU - input” on the second line.

--- High Amperage Multis. ---

EU p2p comes with a built in 5% loss. This affects some multiblocks like the PrAss, MVF, MEBF, or any multiblock that uses more than 95% of its total amperage capacity. This includes any multiblock that you overclock using 2 hatches, since it no longer has a spare amp to fill its buffer. A useful and cheap tool to get around this is to use diodes or energy distributors as makeshift amperage buffer.

--- Multiblock Lines ---

If you have a long chain of multiblocks all with the same energy hatch tier, you can output into a cable and distribute the energy amongst all multis

--- What if I need an energy channel bigger than 64A? ---

Energy channels are only limited by how many dynamos you are willing to make (this is also the reason eu p2p falls off when lasers come around). Simply cable in the output from multiple dynamos into a single p2p energy channel

--- EU P2P in Action ---

--- Big Warning with EU P2P ---

While the powerfails on server restart are no longer an issue, it is very easy to powerfail your entire base if you aren’t careful. If you brick your ME System, your entire base will powerfail along with it. Some tips to avoid catastrophe:

• Precolor your cables when subnetting on active ME cables
• Dont connect wireless connectors from mainnet till the subnet layout is built
• Dont power your ME system with EU P2P, instead have it hooked directly into your LSC.
• When removing old subnets, the first thing you should break is the subnets ME controller if it has one.

--- EU P2P DOES NOT TRANSFORM ---

I cannot stress this enough. EU P2P is a tunnel, a portal, a peer to peer. It does not transform the energy in any way shape or form. If you connect an EV energy hatch to an IV energy channel, it will explode. This is why we create multiple energy channels for multiple different energy tiers.

[hollow hound]

I also would like to mention if people are still nervous about the ae network breaking and affecting their power grid via p2p, then it’s perfectly viable to have a second network purely for power

[versed bough]

From experience it proves difficult to make changes to my LSC thanks to a phenomenon known as "Incomplete Structure" that takes place when you remove blocks from it, which causes all connected machines with eu p2p to powerfail. Thankfully it is not impossible to hotswap dynamos when you plan on upgrading throughput while keeping your machines running, given you are a keyboard warrior and can place another block in it's place in seconds.

[blissful herald]

Matter manipular is good for this once you get it. But yea I just hotswap 99% of the time ngl.

[winter canopy]

The tip for larger than 64a in a single p2p is so big brain I never considered it

I've been using it from EV to late IV now too and the only gripes I've found is that sometimes I can get powerfails when machines have a lot of parallels, I fixed this by putting 4a diodes on each hatch though for problematic machines, so I'm glad you pointed that out. I wasn't aware energy distributors existed though and they have a lot more of a buffer than diodes so that might be the way to go

[thorn elbow]

Generally transforming up as far as you can before the tunnel and then transforming down to take the power out will work around the 95%+ of an amp issue

[blissful herald]

That can work yea, at the end of the day its just an amperage buffering issue. Instead of a diode or energy distributor you're using a transformer as a buffer. But it doesnt save energy to transform as high as you can like with cables.

[dull gale]

Though the more transformers, diodes and the like you have your current pass through, the greater the energy "tax", since afaik any block that can output EUs has a 5% or 10%

[hollow hound]

No, they have 1eu loss

From memory

[dull gale]

transformers and diodes don't have the output energy tax??? What about the buffers? This is huge for my power lines if I have just been misunderstanding the mechanic this whole time.

[hollow hound]

Fairly sure those are all 1eu/t loss. Only thing I’ve heard of having a proper tax is p2p GT eu

[dull gale]

By tax, I mean the "output loss" section on the gtnh wiki page for electricity, it's way lower than 5% actually, but it could still make your amps go below the 500/2000 thresholds to single-hatch power some multis if you do too many transformations (?) Would that ever be a problem with these kinds of setups?

[blissful herald]

With singlehatched multis you dont need diodes or transformers anyway. A regular energy hatch can pull 2 amps and most singlehatched multis use 1 amp. So you have a spare amp to fill the internal buffer. Only exception is multiblocks which accept multiamp hatches like MVF, since it can use both amps of a regular energy hatch.

[lilac bay]

@copper mason

[winter canopy]

Fairly certain I've encountered cases where parallels cause this to not be true. I'm unsure why it happens but I know diodes have fixed it

I've not paid attention to whether they can take multi amp hatches tbf

I know I've encouraged it with the extruder and mixer though

[fierce stump]

There are wierd cringe recipies that need entire amps, not 15/16. There are also machines that use 2 amps in one hatch, like megas, or the chem plant

Bart is the problem here

For example, making benzene, I needed 3 hatches to not powerfail

Because the recipie and multi ate the buffer

[dark crow]

what cables are you using here that will take 256 IV (or any tier I guess) amps? supercons will do, but yours look like regular covered cables?

[blissful herald]

Fake demonstration cable #1

[dark crow]

haha, np thanks! Wanted to make sure I'd not missed something obvious 🙂

[rustic crow]

How would you move the input p2p in this configuration? Can advanced memory card magically rebind all of the outputs to the new location?

[blissful herald]

No. but if u set it to “bind to output” mode, you can select all the output tunnels you want to rebind to the new input

Instead of going around looking for all the outputs bound to the old input

[craggy crag]

Any tips for monitoring how much each one of the output p2ps consumes?

[hollow hound]

Not really

[winter canopy]

Same way you'd do it in a non P2P spine

[craggy crag]

But how though? I have no idea. I tried wireless metrics covers on cables but they do not work

I tried setting up cable diodes on p2p outputs, but metrics covers do not work on them as well

My current issue now is that something consumes energy on my base and I want to know what

[hollow hound]

Not what they want

[hollow hound]

You can’t monitor amperage through cables sadly due to the nature of it being a request system

[void copper]

I have this test setup which has 3 machines using 3 amps of EV total alongside 3 2A diodes

If less than 6 amps is provided, this causes a power failure. Does this not limit machines to total amps / 2 ?

[craggy crag]

Well, thanks for you reply. It gave me an idea to replace diode with a battery buffer. This one is still no good, cause high-tier batteries are quite expensive. And you need 1 per output amp of a buffer 🙁

[blissful herald]

Amps are requested in whole. Since theres 5% loss, sometimes the diode will request 2A instead of 1A for a second to compensate for the 5% loss.

[void copper]

Right, which is why I tried lowering the output amps to 5 since those requests should be infrequent enough to get away with less amps being required. Unfortunately that caused a power fail

[fast cave]

energy distribitors are an option but super overkill, theres also 8a, 12a and 16a diodes. i tend to just go one diode tier above the number of amps im using and beyond 16 just eat the cost of a energy distributor which honestly isnt even that expensive