This is an idea of how I would handle the electrolytic separator

*speed upgrades would remain the same and would equate the production speed being multiplied by (2^(speed upgrades)) so 8 speed upgrades would multiply the overall production 256 times.

*energy upgrades will work differently on the other hand, each upgrade will slightly increase the efficiency of the machine to near 100% and the energy capacity increase would remain the same

(energy used by separator: energy recovered from gas generator)
stock: 20% efficient
1 energy upgrade: 30% efficient
2 energy upgrades: 40% efficient
3 energy upgrades: 50% efficient
4 energy upgrades: 60% efficient
5 energy upgrades: 70% efficient
6 energy upgrades: 80% efficient
7 energy upgrades: 90% efficient
8 energy upgrades: 100% efficient

*if the gas being used by a machine is lower than the seperator's production rate, the separator would be able to slow down its own production and not stay on mainly to reduce stuttering on and off

The separator is designed to prevent creating energy from nothing.

It is intended to use as much energy to produce hydrogen as would be gained by burning it in a gas burning generator

That issue was also fixed after you reported it.

I do know that this is the way it was originally designed but recently on one of my survival and testing, I recently installed all of the energy and speed upgrades and noticed it was producing massive amounts of power from nothing. I was not sure what was happening here. I had set to drain excess oxygen just to see what would happen.

Ok, I think I know what is going on here, the separator inst using power at all, I disconnected it from its power source and it is still running without losing anything in its buffer. It is also displaying that it isnt using any power.

9.9.6
forge 31.0.1

What version of mekanism are you on? That is the bug you had reported and I fixed in 9.9.4

right now, nothing, but it doesn't matter what upgrades I have in it, I just noticed that when I had it hooked up to the gas gen with all the speed upgrades, the power production shot through the roof.

I will look at it again tomorrow I guess, what upgrades do you have installed?

Edit: I can reproduce it with no upgrades, guess it somehow crept back in even though I thought I fixed it. Maybe something I did reverted the fix.

Yes, I know that this type of machine in real life isn't really efficient to begin with. That is why hydrogen fuel cell cars haven't really caught on and why we are seeing more battery powered varients such as Tesla.

I also thought that the initial efficiency may be too inneficiant for the starting tiers so the upgrades could actually upgrade at 5% increments. It could even end at 90% or 95% efficiency if you really want to be realistic.

Next version (not quite sure when the release will be yet), will have the electrolytic separator's energy usages working properly again.

Also one question about your suggestion for the energy usage of the separator, is your suggestion to make it so that you only get the energy back 1:1 iff you have max energy upgrades in it, and otherwise you end up losing some energy?

The way I believe it is supposed to work is that the energy used by the separator is always proportional to the energy recovered by burning the hydrogen in a gas burning generator regardless of energy and speed upgrades.

While I'd rather not add an efficiency aspect to the separator, I would consider adding such a mechanic to the Gas-Burning Generator. Efficiency upgrades would be an interesting way to add the upgrade mechanic to Mekanism's generators.