Solar Panels Should Produce Heat

[tuxii]

In reality, solar panels are heated by the sunlight hitting them.  While ONI doesn't have a sunlight-heating mechanic at all, solar panels should not be completely free energy once you can make glass.  Every other power producer in the game produces heat, even the hamster wheel.

Make solar panels produce heat like any other heat-producing building.

This would necessitate some sort of cooling system or at the very least building them touching the surface tiles of the planetoid to keep them functioning.

They should also require more materials to craft.

Similar to how the Steam Turbine takes 2 materials to build, solar panels should require 200 glass and 200 or more refined metal to craft.  This would also allow players to elevate its overheat temperature.  Sure this might open an exploit to turn glass into metal by melting solar panels but that doesn't really matter as they'd require external heat because they'll stop producing heat once they break from overheating.

 

 

[meekay]

I think the game is missing some real-world physics that would be needed to make this not be anti-fun. Notably, solar heating (as you mention) and radiative heat exchange.

[SharraShimada]

They used to produce heat way in the past. The problem ist, one cant cool them properly.

[Primalflower]

I think it would be much more frustrating than fun to find a way to cool them, that or severely limiting as you would only want to put them where there is backwall. Perhaps this is something you would want in pursuit of balance, but I like solar panels the way they are, just using them sparsely.

[Sasza22]

They just need to exchange heat with their bottom solid tiles (for some weird reason they don`t). If they did you could easily apply one of the common cooling solutions with the top still being fully exposed to space.

[calibayzone]

Quote

In reality, solar panels are heated by the sunlight hitting them.

Also, in reality solar panels radiate heat as infrared light. ONI has no such radiation mechanic which would otherwise cool down hot space objects. But could we implement both mechanics for just the panels?

Solar panels seek an equilibrium temperature dependent on how much is exposed to space vs how much is in the sun. More lux = more heating. A hotter panel means more cooling. But cooling is limited the less "exposed to space" tiles the panel is covering, as these tiles allow heat to be lost "to the third dimension". Thus it can't cool deep underground.

Lets balance it maybe for 70C equilibrium in full sunlight. Panels only gain cooling for "exposed to space" tiles. A hotter solar panel will cool off (negative heat generation) while a cooler one warms up. Panels should exchange heat with radiant pipes through them (if they don't already) and panels can be a radiator even if they are sealed under the bunker doors and generate no power, giving them an alternate use for a post-power-scarcity base.

In spaced-out, the lux sets the temperature. Higher lux planetoid panels will overheat unless stacked and/or activly cooled, and lower lux ones generate less power but can be used as radiators more easily.

Physical realism demands the cooling capacity to scale as the temperature in Kelvin to the fourth power. That means 90C is about twice the cooling power as 30C, and it rapidly increases at higher temperature. If you don't mind using glass to repair them you can use them as much more powerful cooling.

This makes solar panels much richer and more interesting than just place them there and get free power (more so in spaced-out where there is much more space and most planets are meteor-free). There is already a radiator mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1860778068, so making each solar panel a radiator + a variable heat producer could be made into a mod fairly easily.

[tuxii]

On 4/14/2022 at 3:37 PM, Sasza22 said:

They just need to exchange heat with their bottom solid tiles (for some weird reason they don`t). If they did you could easily apply one of the common cooling solutions with the top still being fully exposed to space.

This is how I envisioned they'd work when I made the suggestion.  They'd make a set amount of heat when producing power that had to be dealt with somehow.  The amount could even be small to artificially account for what they'd normally radiate into space.

On 4/14/2022 at 10:56 AM, Primalflower said:

I think it would be much more frustrating than fun to find a way to cool them, that or severely limiting as you would only want to put them where there is backwall. Perhaps this is something you would want in pursuit of balance, but I like solar panels the way they are, just using them sparsely.

Early on all that would need to be done is have them touching natural tiles on the surface, unless it's the Flipped Asteroid.
Drywall is easily crafted, so the backwall argument is moot.

2 hours ago, calibayzone said:

Also, in reality solar panels radiate heat as infrared light. ONI has no such radiation mechanic which would otherwise cool down hot space objects. But could we implement both mechanics for just the panels?

I'd rather they just produce a fixed amount of heat when they produce power just to keep the calculation load down and for simplicity of programming.

Besides I believe exactly zero of my suggestions have ever been implemented anyway.  I don't even know why I bother anymore.