When using an array of generators to power machines, each wire connected to the machine has a tick impact starting at ~25 microseconds per tick, which adds up if you have a dozen generators in an array.

Array of Solar panels with default parts from JEI, connected with Super Cable to an inactive Neon Furnace:

This level of tick impact is not horrible, though, compared to another common scenario. Solar only works during the day, and it's hard to scale up power output without making a lot of solar generators. Therefore, an obvious solution would be to use Turbine Generators, which generate 1NE per block of water above them, allowing for large amounts of power generation even without Industrial Chipsets which are harder to keep cool. The issue then becomes how to get a large amount of water above the turbines without an ugly water drop in the air.

Wires have a significantly higher impact when there is a long run between the generators and the machines, so placing turbines at the bottom of a shaft and running cable up to machines has an extreme effect on tick times.

Turbines with high-power Torus parts connected with Super Cable to a Neon Furnace (around 30 blocks above) with Torus parts processing ore:

(Bottom row is the turbines under a 30-block waterfall, top row is the Super Cable hidden in the wall)

As you can see, each cable connection is taking ~110 microseconds per tick, with the cable on the end taking nearly 150. The turbines themselves, with the exception of the one on the far left, are low impact.

To confirm that the long run of cable is the issue, I built a nearly identical setup, but this time the Neon Furnace was very close to the turbine generators:

The layout of the turbines and cables is the same as the other setup, down to using the exact same turbines (all the turbines in both setups were copied from a single one with ctrl+middle mouse in creative). However, each cable in the setup without the long cable run is using around 30 microseconds per tick, which, while still not optimal, is nearly 4 times faster than the cables connected to a cable run.

As an extra note, I found that splitting the cable run into parts with Battery Boxes as buffers alleviates overall tick usage somewhat, though most of the tick time simply moves to the cable block past the Battery Box.

Mod List:

• Futurepack-1.12.2-26.3.210.jar
• jeiintegration_1.12.2-1.5.1.36.jar
• Hwyla-1.8.26-B41_1.12.2.jar
• JustEnoughResources-1.12.2-0.8.10.50.jar
• jei_1.12.2-4.12.0.216.jar
• LagGoggles-FORGE-1.12.2-4.1.jar

Using latest Forge: v14.23.4.2760

I just tested on the latest released version (309), and this actually seems to have been fixed; though the Turbine Generators seem to be taking double the tick time, the wires have gone from ~110us/t to usually 7us/t for each connection to a generator.

Closing the issue.