Every machine in Mekanism runs on power, and the mod gives you six generators to make it with, as well as two reactors and a turbine for later on. Most players will start with a 
Heat Generator, move on to a few 
Wind Generators, and then build a 
Gas-Burning Generator that burns Ethene, which makes over 70,000 FE/t from one block.
The screens in the mod will show your power in FE, which is the same unit that most other tech mods use. Older guides give everything in Joules, and one FE is worth 2.5 J, so a machine that’s listed at 50 J/t elsewhere is the same one that says 20 FE/t in your game.
Every Power Source Compared
The table has every way to make power at the mod’s default settings, in the order you’ll be able to build them. The outputs are the most each one will make, as several of them depend on where they’re placed or how much fuel is reaching them, which the sections further down go into.
Every Mekanism Power Source
| Runs On | Page | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Heat Generator (burning)What to Know A piece of Coal lasts under half a second, so it is for your first few machines only. | Start | 44.8 | Furnace fuel or Lava in its tank | Heat Generator |
| Heat Generator (Lava beside it)What to Know 1.6 FE/t with one side touching Lava and 29.2 with five. The Nether adds more. | Start | 29.2 | Lava source blocks touching it, never used up | Heat Generator |
  Solar GeneratorWhat to Know Nothing at night and a fifth in rain. Colder, drier biomes give more. | Early | 20 | Daylight and open sky | Solar Generator |
 Wind GeneratorWhat to Know 24 FE/t near the bottom of the world, rising with height to 192 at the build limit. Day and night. | Early | 192 | Nothing | Wind Generator |
  Advanced Solar GeneratorWhat to Know Same rules as the Solar Generator. Also heats a Thermal Evaporation Plant. | Early | 120 | Daylight and open sky | Solar Generator |
  Bio-GeneratorWhat to Know A flat 140 FE/t while it has fuel. A Melon or Pumpkin farm and a Crusher will feed it. | Early | 140 | Bio Fuel, one every 10 seconds | Bio-Generator |
 Gas-Burning Generator (Hydrogen)What to Know Only gives back what the Electrolytic Separator spent making the Hydrogen. | Mid | 20480 | Hydrogen, 80 FE per mB | Gas-Burning Generator |
| Gas-Burning Generator (Ethene)What to Know Output follows how full its tank is. 6.4 mB of Ethene a tick at full output. | Mid | 72192 | Ethene, 11,280 FE per mB | Gas-Burning Generator |
  Fission Reactor with a turbineWhat to Know Makes Steam, not power. Up to 80,000 FE/t through a turbine for every 1 mB/t of burn rate. | Late | — | Fissile Fuel, with Water or Sodium as coolant | Fission Reactor |
  Industrial TurbineWhat to Know Up to 4 FE for each mB of Steam. The figure is for the largest turbine. | Late | 53490000 | Steam from a reactor or boiler | Industrial Turbine |
  Fusion ReactorWhat to Know 200,000 FE/t for each point of injection rate when air-cooled, up to a rate of 98. | End | 19600000 | D-T Fuel, or Deuterium and Tritium | Fusion Reactor |
No power sources match those filters.
Default config, in FE per tick (1 FE = 2.5 J). The Fission Reactor has no figure of its own, as its output depends on the burn rate you set and the turbine it feeds.
Generators push their power out by themselves, but only from certain sides. The Heat Generator, the Bio-Generator and the Gas-Burning Generator send it out of the front, a Solar Generator from the bottom, and the Wind Generator and Advanced Solar Generator from the front and the bottom. None of them take Speed or Energy Upgrades either.
Your First Power
The Heat Generator is the only generator you’re able to craft before you have Steel, so it’ll be your first. It makes about 45 FE/t (112 J/t) while it’s burning fuel, which is enough to run two of the early machines at once. You’ll want to place it so that its front is touching the machine, as your first cables need Steel as well.
A machine will also run on 
Redstone Dust with no generator at all, as each piece that you put in its energy slot turns into 4,000 FE (10,000 J). That’s enough for one full operation in a 
Metallurgic Infuser, which is handy for making your first Steel before anything else is set up.
Wind and Solar
Wind Generators are what most players will build next, as they don’t need any fuel and they work at night and in the rain. The higher one is placed the more it makes, from 24 FE/t near the bottom of the world up to 192 FE/t at the build limit, so it’s worth putting them on a hill or a tower.
Solar Generators only make 20 FE/t at midday, and nothing at all at night, so a Wind Generator will beat one almost anywhere. The Advanced Solar Generator is better at 120 FE/t, but its main job comes later, as it’s the block that heats a Thermal Evaporation Plant for free.
Bio-Generators
A Bio-Generator makes a flat 140 FE/t for as long as it has 
Bio Fuel, and it’ll burn one piece every 10 seconds. Bio Fuel comes from putting crops through a 
Crusher, and a 
Melon or a 
Pumpkin gives 6 pieces each, which makes a farm of either one the usual way to keep a row of these running.
Ethene and the Gas-Burning Generator
The Gas-Burning Generator is the biggest source of power before reactors, and what it makes depends on the gas you give it. Hydrogen is worth 80 FE per mB, whereas Ethene is worth 11,280 FE per mB, which is 141 times as much. With a full tank of Ethene one generator will put out 72,192 FE/t, the same as about 515 Bio-Generators.
An 
Electrolytic Separator spends 80 FE on every mB of Hydrogen it makes, which is exactly what a Gas-Burning Generator gets back from burning it. So a loop of those two machines won’t gain you anything, and Hydrogen is only worth making as an ingredient for Ethene.
Ethene is made in a 
Pressurized Reaction Chamber from 2 Bio Fuel, 10 mB of Water and 100 mB of Hydrogen, which gives you 100 mB of it each time. The same 2 Bio Fuel would only be worth 56,000 FE in a Bio-Generator, but as Ethene they’re worth over a million. It was called Ethylene in older versions, and the Ethene page has a full setup.
The generator doesn’t burn at a fixed rate, as it burns faster the fuller its tank is. That means it settles at whatever rate you’re feeding it, and it’ll stop burning when nothing is using the power, so no fuel gets wasted while your machines are sitting idle.
Reactors and Turbines
A Fission Reactor doesn’t make any power by itself, as all it does is turn Water into Steam. That Steam has to go through an Industrial Turbine, which will make up to 4 FE from each mB of it. Burning 1 mB of Fissile Fuel a tick boils 20,000 mB of Steam, so that’s worth up to 80,000 FE/t once the turbine is big enough.
The turbine will run on Steam from a Thermoelectric Boiler as well, which is how a reactor that’s cooled with Sodium gets its heat turned into power. The largest turbine you’re able to build makes about 53 million FE/t, though it needs a great deal more Steam than one small reactor will give it.
The Fusion Reactor is the end of the line, and it’s the only reactor that makes power directly. It gives 200,000 FE/t for each point of its injection rate when it has no Water in it, up to 19.6 million FE/t at a rate of 98. With Water it makes a quarter of that and a lot of Steam, which is worth more if you have the turbines for it.
Storing and Moving Power
Power travels through Universal Cables, and you’ll want an Energy Cube between your generators and your machines so that nothing is wasted while they’re idle. A 
Basic Energy Cube holds 1.6 million FE, and when cubes stop being enough, an Induction Matrix is the multiblock that replaces them.
| Machine | FE/t while working |
|---|---|
| Enrichment Chamber, Crusher, Energized Smelter, Metallurgic Infuser, Combiner | 20 |
| Osmium Compressor | 40 |
| Purification Chamber | 80 |
| Chemical Injection Chamber, Chemical Dissolution Chamber, Chemical Crystallizer | 160 |
| Digital Miner | 400 |
Those are the draws without any upgrades, and 
Speed Upgrades will raise them a lot, as 8 of them make a machine use a hundred times as much. It’s worth adding up what you plan to run before you pick a generator, as a 20 FE/t machine with 8 Speed Upgrades needs 2,000 FE/t all to itself.
Wireless Power
Mekanism doesn’t have a wireless cable, but two blocks will move power without one. Two 
Quantum Entangloporters set to the same frequency share one energy buffer, however far apart they are, even across dimensions. The 
Chargepad is the other one, which charges the items you’re carrying while you stand on it.
The numbers on this page can be changed by a modpack, and the config page shows where. If you’re just starting out, the Heat Generator page is the next one to read, as it covers how to place your first one.
FAQ
Before reactors it’s the Gas-Burning Generator running on Ethene, as one of them will make up to 72,192 FE/t from a crop farm and a few machines. After that, a Fission Reactor feeding an Industrial Turbine makes far more, and the Fusion Reactor is the largest source in the mod.
The mod stores everything in Joules, but its screens show FE unless you change the setting, and 1 FE is the same as 2.5 J. Clicking the energy tab in a machine will switch the display, so you’re able to read it either way, like 20 FE/t or 50 J/t for an 
Enrichment Chamber.
A Gas-Burning Generator will burn Hydrogen, but it only returns the 80 FE per mB that an Electrolytic Separator used to make it. It’s better to turn that Hydrogen into Ethene in a Pressurized Reaction Chamber first, as Ethene is worth 141 times as much when it’s burned.
There isn’t a wireless cable, but a pair of Quantum Entangloporters on the same frequency will share their energy over any distance, which does the same job. A Chargepad will also charge the items you’re carrying when you stand on it, like 
Free Runners or an 
Atomic Disassembler.
