LV

Welcome to Low Voltage, the first of many power tiers in GregTech: New Horizons! With access to electricity comes new hazards and mechanics, but also far more variety of specialized machines that can process materials into new parts with greater efficiency.

EU (Energy Units) Mechanics
Gregtech energy consists of Voltage and Amperage. A Low Voltage (LV) GT generator will output 32 volts (32V) in 1 amperage (1A/1 amp). Four generators on the same cable will output 32 volts in 4 amps combined. 32 volts in 4 amps is not the same thing as MV (Medium Voltage - 128 volts per amp). This can be compared to four cables containing 32 volts each, or one 4x Cable. The x rating of a cable (x1, x2, x4, etc.) denotes its maximum amperage. The general rule of thumb is your cables should have an equal Amp capacity to the number of generators/batteries attached. Battery Buffers output 1A per battery, while virtually every generator puts out 1A. Having a cable with enough Amperage capacity for all of them at once prevents fires and explosions.

For more advanced and complete information, see Electricity.

Energy Loss
The tooltip for GT cables show their max voltage, max Amperage and Loss per Meter/Ampere. A cable or wire will catch fire if it receives more than its max voltage or max amperage. A normal 1x Tin Cable will lose 1 volt for each block (meter) length of the cable. Uncoated wires lose even more per block and present a shock hazard, so never use bare wire to connect machines. If the distance between the power input and machine is 10 blocks long, and the generator is generating 32 volts in 1 amp, then there will only be 22 volts in 1 amp remaining on the other end of the cable. With a LV battery buffer with 4 LV batteries inside, it would send 32 volts in up to 4 amps, but after 10 blocks there will only be 22 volts each amp remaining. Lossless cables are gated behind Redstone Alloy and the Electric Blast Furnace, so until available players are well advised to keep cables as short as possible.

Battery Buffers
Battery Buffers are used to store EU Energy, at a 5% loss cost. Battery Buffers can be made in variable capacities between 1x and 16x internal slots. The Buffer itself does not store power; batteries matching the tier have to be inserted into the Battery Buffer to make it function. Each battery added will increase the buffer's capacity by +2 amps input and +1 amp output. Since buffers can have a variable amperage output based on the number of inserted batteries, care must be taken to ensure the cable has sufficient capacity to handle the buffer's maximum output. This becomes more relevant when multiple machines are all requesting amps at the same time over a longer cable.

GT Electric Machines
LV Electric machines have some new features that were not available with Steam-age machinery. The Steam exhaust is replaced with an automatic output. This output's facing can be changed with a wrench similar to how the exhaust was configured on Steam machines. Just like their Steam counterparts, all electric GT machines cannot be input or output from their front face. To enable automatic output, open the GUI of the machine and click on the button at the lower left corner. There are two automatic output toggle buttons; the left one is for liquid and the right one is for items.

Gregtech machinery is divided by tier, which corresponds to a specific voltage - LV (32v), MV (128v), HV (512v) etc. Most recipes are gated to a specific voltage/tier or higher, which is shown with the recipe in NEI (Not Enough Items). If the recipe requires more than one amp it will also be listed here. Pay careful attention to what tier a recipe requires - with LV machinery, MV and higher recipes are inaccessible.

For example, putting Clay Dust through the Electrolyzer to get Aluminium dust requires 120 EU/t (MV). Since the Basic Electrolyzer is only able to do 32EU/t, this recipe is unavailable until the Advanced Electrolyzer (MV).

Recipes close to the voltage limit for LV (32 EU/t) may cause the machine to request multiple amps, especially if there is any cable loss. A single LV generator will often not be capable of supplying enough power if the machine is placed too far away due to cable loss. Most GT machines will accept up to 2 amps. A second generator or Battery Buffer may be needed to keep a a high cost recipe running. If a machine runs out of power, it will stall resetting any progress but not losing the materials. A soft mallet can be used to temporarily disable a machine to give a buffer time to recharge or wait until more power generation is available.

Some machines require multiple amps to run at all, such as the Arc Furnace and Electric Blast Furnace. The Arc Furnace requires 3 amps to function and can accept up to 7 amps. Checking any recipe for the Arc Furnace will show Usage XX/t, voltage 32 EU/t and amperage 3. The Electric Blast Furnace is even more demanding, taking four amps of LV minimum for its most basic recipes.

Transformers
Once you have crafted your first EBF and started MV tier. You will gain access to producing MV (Medium Voltage, 128v) which is great! However. You will need to transform this energy into LV power to use it with your existing LV machines since LV Machines will explode if they are given too high voltage.

The Transformer allows you to convert GT Energy between voltage tiers. The big hollow circle is the Higher voltage side and is the front of the transformer, while the 5 smaller circles is the lower voltage sides.

By default the Transformer is taking 1 amp of higher voltage and transforms it into 4 amps of lower voltage. This is also called Step-Down mode. Ingame it will say “Machine Active” when toggling to this mode. You can also hit the transformer with a Soft Mallet to switch between its two modes. In Inverted mode, Step-Up mode (“Machine Inactive”), the Transformer will take 4 amps of lower Voltage and transform it into 1 amp of Higher voltage. Keep in mind that in this mode the lower voltage sides become the Input, and the higher voltage side is therefore the Output.

You should never change mode on a transformer that has power. Always disconnect cables before switching mode on the Transformers.

Power Transformer
The Power Transformer works like an ordinary transformer with one exception. It will accept 4 amps of higher voltage and turn it into 16 amps of lower voltage in its default mode. In inverted mode it will transform 16amps lower voltage to 4 amps of higher voltage.

IC2 EU to GT EU
To transform IC2 energy into GT energy you simply need to place a GT transformer next to the IC2 power source. Keep in mind that the IC2 power gen is only producing 1 amp, therefore the Transformer should be in Step-Down mode.

GT EU to Others
GT Cables can be attached to almost any machine that requires some kind of energy. GT Cables can transform energy to IC2, RF, Galacticraft and more!

Explosions
There is multiple ways GT Electric machines can explode. Let's start with Rain. Rain will make your electric machines explode if the rain is on any adjacent blocks to the machine, so put your machinery under a proper roof. Also worth noting is that Cables without insulation will catch on fire from rain. If fire is adjacent to your machines they can explode as well. So don't forget what voltage you put through your cables! Keep in mind that an explosion can make another machine explode as well. This might lead to you having a really bad day.

Over Voltage
If you give your machines too high voltage they will explode. To avoid making this error, I suggest that you make some space between different tiers of machines. You should also use different cables for different tiers to avoid mistakes. This means avoid using MV cables for LV energy transfer.

Avoid Chunk border problems
Note: This is not fixed in version 2.0.0.0

Any server that runs some variant of bukkit has a "feature" that slows the tickrate of objects in chunks that are not force loaded and do not have a player in them. (So like all the chunks around you right now). Which causes cables to think they have more amps than normal going through them. These extra amps will often cause the cables to burn, which can lead to machines exploding. There are a couple ways to solve this, but one way is to make two transformers, one that steps up the voltage, and then another that steps it back down. This way you can have 4A max going over that border through those transformers. The transformers should be placed on either side of the chunk border. So something like: cable -> transformer Step-Up -> chunk border -> transformer Step-Down -> cable. If you want, you can make battery buffers or machine hulls instead of transformers.