LV

Please note that this guide will only show you the most basics about Electricity. For more advanced information you should read about Electricity.

EU (Energy Units) Mechanics
Gregtech energy consists of Voltage and Amperage. An LV (Low Voltage) GT generator will output 32 volts in 1amp. If you have four generators they will output 32 volts in 4 amps together. 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.

Energy Loss
As you may have noticed already the tooltip for GT cables show their max voltage, max Amperage and Loss/Meter/Ampere An cable will catch on fire if they receive more than its max Voltage, and/or max Amperage. A normal 1x Tin Cable will lose 1 volt, over each block (meter) the cable passes. Which means that if the cable 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. If you would have an LV battery buffers with 4 LV batteries inside, it will send out 32 volts in 4 amps, but after 10 blocks there will only be 22 volts in 4 amps remaining.

Battery Buffers
Battery Buffers are used to store energy inside. Battery Buffers are available in different sizes depending on your actual need. But the Battery Buffer itself will not store any power, to store power inside a Battery Buffer you’ll need to put batteries inside. Each battery you add in a Battery Buffer will accept 2 amps of power and will output 1 amp of energy. Since each battery inside the Battery Buffer is sending out 1 amp you’ll need to think about which cables you need to use after the buffer, and also how many slots you need inside the Battery Buffer. Since (most) GT machines will need one amp to run, you might need to send two amps to it depending on how long of a cable run you have in between the Battery Buffer and the machine. Remember Cable loss?

GT Electric Machines
Let's start to compare the GT electric machines to GT Steam machines. The Steam exhaust is replaced with an automatic output. This output can be changed with a wrench similar to how the exhaust was working, but to enable it you need to open the GUI of the machine and click on the button at the lower left corner. (Picture below) Notice how there are two buttons, The left one is for liquid, and the right one is for item outputs. (Temporary picture)

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.