Block radios draw energy (FE) every tick from the power network they are wired to, more while transmitting. Starved, a radio browns out: its panel cycles on, PWR, dark.
HF and all-band radio 8 / 26 FE/t
QRP 2 / 13
VHF base station 2 / 13
Repeater 4 / 17
Automatic tuner 4
Microwave radio 26 while on
Building it
Solar panels join by touching each other and the charge controller at the end of the row. A controller passes up to 180 FE a tick, about 20 panels in full sun; for a bigger array, set more controllers against it, each wired to the batteries, and they share the panels' power. Run wire from the controller to a large battery and from the battery to the radio. The battery also takes and gives Forge Energy, so other mods' generators can charge it.
BUILD Solar station
Drag to turn it, scroll or pinch to zoom.
Top-down view
SSSKaBa0
S Solar Panel
K Charge Controller
B Large Battery
a Wire
0 20m Radio
Three panels, controller, battery, radio.
Above, the build in 3D; below the 3D view, a top-down view of each layer. In game, press Visualize on this page of the handbook to see it as ghost blocks.
Numbers
A solar panel makes 9 FE/t by day under open sky, half that in rain. A large battery holds 260,000 FE, about a Minecraft day of a VHF base station; a small battery 60,000, and a new one comes half to two thirds charged.
Batteries wired together fill and drain together, each taking an even share.
Power wire is laid like redstone and climbs walls. Waterproof wire survives in water. A wire passthrough turns a solid block into a conductor for both power and coax, keeping its look, so cables can go through walls.
Use coax on a laid wire (or wire on coax) and both lie in one block as a wire bundle.
Coloured wire
Wire comes in sixteen colours, like coax: a colour joins only its own colour (plain wire is a colour of its own), so two runs can lie side by side, or share a bundle, without becoming one circuit. To join runs of different colours, run them into a Wire Junction: every power wire touching it is one circuit (coax does not join it). Wire is thin and coax fat, so you can tell them apart whatever the colour.
Use a dye on laid wire to colour the whole run (sneak for one block), or craft eight wire round a dye. Waterproof wire stays plain.
With Create installed (and not Create Crafts & Additions, which has its own), Radiocraft adds an Alternator: turn its shaft and it pushes power into the block beside it, such as a large battery.
It makes 360 FE/t at 256 RPM, in proportion: one large water wheel geared to 8 RPM gives about 11 FE/t, enough for a VHF base station.
Making one
On a mechanical crafter grid: a shaft in the middle, antenna wire round it, iron sheets round that and andesite alloy at the two ends.
The large battery takes power from other mods' generators too.
Solar Panel
B
C
D
Charge Controller
C
B
C
8 × Red Wire
3 × Waterproof Wire
4 × Wire Passthrough
