Water Mill

Water Mill
Properties
Type	Generator
Stackable	Yes (64)
Technical Details
UU Cost	{{{uu_cost}}}
First appearance	?
ID	IC2:{{{id}}}

The Water Mill produces EU by either having a Water Bucket placed in its lower slot, or being surrounded by running or standing water.

Recipe

Usage

Place Water Buckets in the lower slot (or place the Water Mill inside water), and optionally an RE Battery in the upper slot. The Water Mill will charge the battery or output power at a rate of 4 EU/s (manned) or 0.014 EU/s per block of adjacent water (This has been changed as of IC 8.00. The current value is higher than .014, but is unknown as to it's exact value.) (unmanned).

Energy

Storage: None

Output (Manned): 840 EU per bucket of water supplied at a rate of 4 EU/s

Output (Unmanned): 0.014 EU/s per block of adjacent water (See Detailed Mechanics)

Water Towers

A Water Mill on its own will produce very little EU if left unmanned, even when completely surrounded in water. So it's better to build compact clusters of them. A 'water tower' is one of many methods.

Side view: Top view:

Note the Switch Cable in the center of each cluster of 4 Water Mills and also the one just before the MFE.

This is a repeatable design, more sections can be added to the top as required. The missing Water Mill in the diagram is to prevent contacting the next section of the tower above.

For best results, contain the tower sections so that there's at least a one block layer of water around it.

It's also possible to cluster multiple towers into one 'container'.

Detailed Mechanics

A Water Mill only uses water that directly surrounds it (a 3x3x3 box with the Water Mill in the center). Each block of water adds roughly 0.014 EU/s to its overall output.

Using the water tower design from above will result in each Water Mill being surrounded by 21 water blocks like so:

21 * 0.014 = roughly 0.29 EU/s from each watermill, meaning roughly 3.2 EU/s from each tower section (11 watermills)

Some notes about the behavior of some Water Mills that were studied:

 - Water Mills can 'share' the same water block with seemingly no effect.
 - Using flowing water instead of still water had no noticeable effect.
 - A Water Mill suspended over water will still react to the water below it even though the watermill 
   is not visibly touching the water.