EU

EU - Energy Unit is the measure of energy used by IC. It is most similar to the SI derived unit Joule. EUs are 'produced' by generators, stored by mobile units like an RE Battery or by stationary units like a batbox, transmitted along cables, and 'consumed' by ICs various machines.

EU stored in items or devices does not leak over time.

EU is not related to Redstone current, but multiple machines can be affected by redstone currents, and a Detector Cable produces redstone current if there is any EU passing through it. Some machines allow a lever to be mounted directly on its block.

Raw EU values are used to measure capacity of energy storage items or blocks.

EU/t

EU/t means Energy unit per tick. It is a derived unit of energy over time, a rate of EU consumption or production, similar to the SI derived unit Watt.

To measure the average EU/t transferred through a wire over time an EC-Meter can be used. If clicked once on a cable it will begin measurement. Clicking the same cable again will display the averagely measured EU/t and over how many ticks the measurement took place. It will also begin a new measurement on the same cable.

EU/t transfer can also be observed by the rate of change in EU capacity displayed by storage devices like the batbox.

Minecraft normally operates at about 20 ticks per second, unless you are experiencing server lag. Therefore, under no lag conditions, the rate of EU/sec is 20x EU/t.

EU/p

EU/p means Energy unit per packet, and is the amount of energy contained in each EU packet. It is also known as voltage. This is important because machines will explode and wires will melt if they are exposed to packets which are too large.

EU/p is almost always fixed for a given wiring setup, as opposed to EU/t which may change as machines turn on and off, storage units fill up, or generators run out of fuel. Nuclear reactors and some generators from addons can emit different packet sizes, but most devices always emit the same size packets.

EU/p ranges from 1 to 2048 EU, and can occasionally be higher. The sum of the EU value of all EU-Packets travelling through a cable or device in one tick is EU/t.

There is also packets/tick, or p/t, which can be involved in calculations but is not normally used. If all packets on a wire are the same size, then on that wire EU/t = EU/p * p/t.

Emitters

• Generators and storage devices emit one packet/tick. This means their EU/p output = their EU/t output.
• BatBoxes emit 32 EU/p (and therefore 32 EU/t). MFE Units emit 128 EU/p. MFS Units emit 512 EU/p.
• Transformers behave somewhat like storage units. An LV tranformer will store up to 128 EU. An MV transformer will store 512 EU. An HV transformer will store 2048 EU. In addition, they are capable of outputting 4 packets/tick. This means a single MV transformer can output 512 EU/t and 128 EU/p when in step-down mode. It cannot output 2048 EU/t and 512 EU/p in step-up mode because it cannot store 2048 EU.

Cables

Cables are limited by the size of EU-Packets that may travel through, NOT the number of packets, NOR the total EU/t contained by these packets. If an EU Packet too large for a cable to handle tries to pass through, the cable will be destroyed.

For example, an unlimited amount of 32 EU-Packets can pass through a Copper cable per tick, but not a single 128 EU-Packet.

Energy loss of a cable is applied to every EU-packet, not the total EU/t passing through. Ex. Using a gold cable, sending 4 32 EU-Packets in a cable (by using 4 batboxs) results in 4 times the energy loss of sending one 128 EU-Packet (by using a MFE Unit). See the Voltage Efficiency section for more information.

Packet Sizes

Name	Packet Size	Emitters	Cable
Micro Voltage	0-5 EU	Solar Panel, Water Mill, Wind Mill
Low Voltage	32 EU	Batbox, LV Transformer,Nuclear Reactor,Generator,Geothermal Generator
Medium Voltage	128 EU	MFE Unit, MV Transformer, Redstoned LV Transformer,Nuclear Reactor
High Voltage	512 EU	MFS Unit, HV Transformer, Redstoned MV Transformer,Nuclear Reactor
Extreme Voltage	2048 EU	Redstoned HV Transformer,Nuclear Reactor

A Nuclear Reactor is able to provide variable sized packets based on setup, the maximum possible energy output is around 3600 EU\t.

An Analogy

Quote from Zjarek of the Industrial-Craft 2 Forums:

"In IC2 electricity is only a buzz word for small magical dwarfs carrying nanobatteries. From every energy source or storage there is one dwarf released every tick. Size of a dwarf is determined by amount of energy they are carrying. Cables are in reality just a tunnels where they run. If a cable or machine don't provide enough space for a dwarf it will get angry and blow up.

However many dwarfs are happy to run alongside each other and will in cooperation carry any amount of energy through a cable. Big dwarf will still prefer to blow up, then to split, but he can split into smaller dwarfs in transformer. Every smaller dwarf which is produced by transformer can go to the same output tunnel.

These useful little creatures are also sometimes nicknamed packets."

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