Power Generation

The Nero Generator and the Solar Array get a factory started; they do not keep one running. This page covers NeroTech's wider power tier — three more generators, a grid buffer, a grid manager and a wireless link — plus the Analytics Terminal's new power-history strip.

These blocks are the feature set once planned for a separate NeroPower mod. That split was retired on 2026-07-31 and the features live here instead; see Power & the NeroPower Split for the decision. Everything below sits on Neroland Core's shared energy surface, so it interoperates with Core storage, with the rest of the ecosystem, and with Forge Energy at the I/O boundary — with no cross-mod dependency.

The line-up at a glance#

Wind Turbine#

Fuel-free generation that does not care about the time of day. Where the Solar Array folds flat at dusk, the turbine keeps turning.

So a turbine at bedrock level with sky access above it makes roughly 12 NE/tick, one at y=200 makes 50, and the climb between the two is smooth. Building tall is the upgrade path — a turbine farm on a mountain ridge is worth more than the same blocks at sea level.

With Nerospace installed, an airless planet gives zero: no atmosphere, no wind. Tune other dimensions by adding entries to windDimensionMultipliers.

Geothermal Generator#

Reads the 3×3 layer directly beneath itself and counts lava source blocks and magma blocks (0–9), producing geothermalNePerTickPerSource (default 8) NE/tick for each one — up to 72 NE/tick over a full 3×3 lava bed.

The source count is cached and re-checked on a neighbour change or every 100 ticks, so a lava bed under a wall of turbines costs nothing per tick.

It is the only fuel-free generator that runs hot, so plan for the thermal system: give it airflow, coolant blocks, or a Coolant Pump. A lava lake in the Nether under a bank of these is the classic build; a hand-built 3×3 pool of buckets works just as well.

Bio Generator#

The Nero Generator's renewable sibling. It burns anything in the datapack-overridable item tag #nerotech:bio_fuels, which NeroTech seeds with minecraft:dried_kelp_block; NeroAgriculture and packs add their own feedstock by adding to the tag — no code change, no config edit.

That combination is the point: it out-produces the Nero Generator on a fuel you can farm, and it is the generator that keeps a region's pollution survivable while still burning something. It does not remove pollution — it just halves the bill, which is often the difference between needing a Scrubber and not.

Battery Bank#

A single-block grid buffer. It generates nothing and consumes nothing; it holds batteryBankCapacity (default 1,000,000) NE — an order of magnitude above a normal machine's buffer.

Reconfigure any face with the Configurator if you want a one-way bank — input on the generator side, output on the factory side. Forge Energy interop is automatic through Core's EnergyLookup seam, so an FE cable or an FE machine sees it as a battery.

Its job is time-shifting: store what your turbines and panels make at noon, spend it after dark. Pair it with the Grid Controller and the factory rides out the night at reduced speed instead of stopping.

Grid Controller#

A passive console — zero NE, no slots — that watches your power grid and sheds load before it collapses.

Below the shed threshold it drops every non-generator machine to the Eco overclock preset; above the restore threshold it puts each machine back on the preset it had. Generators, Battery Banks, Wireless Power Nodes and consoles are exempt — the controller throttles demand, never supply.

The gap between the two thresholds is deliberate hysteresis. A grid hovering exactly at the line would otherwise flap between Eco and Overdrive every rescan; with a 20%/50% band it settles.

Its GUI reports the number of machines watched, the grid fill percentage, and whether shedding is currently in force.

Known limitation. The remembered presets are held in memory. Machines that were shed before a server restart stay on Eco until the next shed/restore cycle runs or you change their preset by hand.

Wireless Power Node#

A pair of nodes moves power across a gap without a cable run.

Pairing uses the Configurator:

1. Crouch-use node A — the tool stores it.
2. Crouch-use node B — the two are paired.
3. Crouch-use an already-linked node to unlink it.

The node buys convenience, never throughput: it is flat-rate and lossless, so it can neither beat a cable nor tax you for using one. Breaking either end unlinks the survivor automatically — the link is revalidated on every pass.

Analytics Terminal — power history#

The Analytics Terminal now keeps a rolling 60-sample window of the net change in aggregate stored NE across the machines it watches, one sample per 100-tick rescan — so the strip covers the last five minutes.

It renders at the bottom of the dashboard as a bar sparkline: green above the midline where the watched machines gained charge, red below where they drained it, self-scaling to the window's peak. A wall of red means you are running a deficit and a Battery Bank is emptying somewhere.

To make room, the dashboard now lists the 10 nearest machines instead of 12.

Which generator should I build?#

• Wind Turbine — remote, clean and nocturnal. No fuel logistics, no heat, no pollution, and it works at 3am. The reward for building tall. Weakest per block at low altitude.
• Geothermal Generator — the steady baseline. Perfectly flat output you can plan a factory around, if you can find (or pour) lava and manage the heat.
• Bio Generator — farmable fuel and half the pollution. The right answer when you want more power than wind gives and less consequence than the Nero Generator costs.
• Solar Array — daylight only; see Tier-1 Machines.
• Nero Generator — the starter: cheap, dirty, and always available.

And around them:

• Battery Bank — buffering. It makes no power; it makes the power you already have arrive at the right time.
• Grid Controller — brownout protection. Under load the factory slows down instead of stalling dead.
• Wireless Power Node — convenience at no loss. Skip the cable run across the ravine; the transfer is flat-rate and lossless, so it is never a throughput upgrade.

A mature base usually runs all three renewables: turbines for the night, geothermal for the floor, and a Bio Generator on standby for the peaks — with Battery Banks between them and a Grid Controller watching the total.

Crafting#

All shaped 3×3 recipes, from vanilla and Tier-1 NeroTech components only — the whole power tier is reachable on Earth with no other mod installed.

Crafting a Battery Bank earns the Charge Reserve advancement, a child of the Solar Array advancement.

Config keys#

windTurbineNePerTick, windDimensionMultipliers, geothermalNePerTickPerSource, bioGeneratorNePerBurnTick, batteryBankCapacity, gridControllerRadius, gridShedThresholdPermille, gridRestorePermille, wirelessNodeRange, wirelessNodeTransferPerTick.

All live in config/nerotech.properties and hot-reload with /neroland config reload, except batteryBankCapacity, which applies when a bank next loads.

---

See also: Tier-1 Machines · Thermal System · Pollution & Mitigation · Overclock Presets · Side Config & the Configurator · Analytics · Materials & Components · Planets