Wiring Guide (Immersive Engineering)

Welcome to FTB Wiki's Guide to Immersive Engineering Wiring.

This guide was written as of Immersive Engineering v4.2.4-134. There have been only a few changes to the mechanics over the years.

Immersive Engineering wiring is meant to look and feel like AC electrical systems. Playing with this mod is a fun way to learn an approximation of how real-world powerlines work, and their working parts can be appreciated from a safe distance.

Basics
Your factory has machines that do cool things. They double ores, grow food, and even mine for you. Everything needs to be supplied with energy.

Equipment
The most essential elements of the energy-net are connectors and wires. Connectors hook machines into the energy-net, and wires bus energy around to all the connectors. Connectors can only fit one wire at a time, so relays are used as nodes between machines. Relays can support multiple wires, but they can't connect machines into the net.

Additional elements include capacitors, transformers, and breakers.

Transforming voltages
Equipment with different voltage ratings can't mix—Wires only hooks up to same-voltage connectors.

We've got two massive devices, called the Transformer and her big-sister upgrade the HV Transformer. The idea is to use them anywhere a lower-voltage power line has to connect with a higher-voltage power line.

This guide will let you in on a secret: Immersive capacitors have these built in.

They're cheaper. They have the bonus of expanding your storage. And yes, they're safe too.

How to cause damage
The newbie electrician might imagine that when things go wrong, metre-long electrical arcs fire off and expensive machinery explodes, or maybe the factory floor catches fire. Electricity can be powerful, so the idea of overworking a power system can be scary. Immersive Engineering is generously lenient. Wires can melt, but rest assured: Connectors and machines will never be damaged.

Here are the basic points:

Connectors are grid bottlenecks, and wires are rated to carry 8× as much power as connectors do. That means you have to have more than 8 supply drawing power from 9 or more high-rate power supplies. IF there's a section where all that power passes through a single wire, then that wire melts.

Here are some cases where a power system can be damaged:
 * 23 triple–Water Wheel]s delivering power through a single LV wire to 9 machines that are drawing full power
 * 33 Thermoelectric Generators, all using Gelid Cryotheum and Blazing Pyrotheum, delivering power through a single LV wire to 9 machines that are drawing full power
 * 9 Diesel Generators delivering power through a single HV wire to 9 machines that are drawing full power
 * 2 HV supply connectors transforming down to MV.

B. Glossary

 * Energy
 * Capacity to do work. This is how "full" your capacitors get.   the cost of completing tasks (like smelting ingots).  Immersive Engineering uses the Forge Energy (FE) system, here measured in Immersive Flux (IF), but machines also accept the functionally equivalent Redstone Flux (RF) system.  Non-Minecrafters use joules (J) or foot-pounds (ft⋅lbf) as a unit.


 * Power
 * Energy transfered (or work done) over time. This is how fast machines generate or use energy, or how fast connectors & wires transfer it.  Frequently measured in Flux/tick.  Real unit is watts (W) or joules-per-second (J/s).


 * Voltage
 * A meta-concept within the mod. Wiring devices are rated as low-voltage (LV), medium-voltage (MV), or high-voltage (HV) to indicate their power transfer limit.