Solar pannels are weak.

[juni3227]

 

This is one of the end game generators, which requires multiple meteor sensor, bunker doors, and glass forge.

And it overheats easily, generates small powers (MAX 220W), and even worse, unstable. The power production changes by time, no electricity at night, interrupted by meteor showers, and meteor cast is expensive that requires at least 8 dishes, moreover, bunker doors are the power drain(480W while open and closing) . (and why bunker doors got overheated at 75 C? come on... even normal airlock does not...)

At least, solar panels should not produce heat while generating power.

Most of all, Solar Panel works fine in the space, even better than on the surface of the earth, because there is no atmosphere.

 

 

For the comparison, the steam turbine that is on the same line with sonar panel creates significant and stable energy provided that it has a heat source. Although installation is complicated, the return is stable, 2KW, forever.

But solar panels are just... not profitable...

[Soulwind]

I'm sure they will be tweaked some over time, but frankly, I want them to be a bit weak.

Panels produce power infinitely.  No resource consumption, no dupe time, nothing (except a trivial amount of heat).

Make them too much more powerful than they are and they render every other power generator obsolete.  Why cook oil

or run a gas synth plant if you could just throw another couple of panels down and forget about it?

[FIXBUGFIXBUGFIX]

1 hour ago, juni3227 said:

stable energy provided that it has a heat source.

A heat source which is enough powerful to heat steam at least 75 degrees * 10 kilograms per second, and some method to keep pressure difference.

[BlueLance]

You are also looking at it a bit backwards, I dont think that it is classed as a late game power source, but a late game addition.

For instance lets say that you are running a mammoth base which eats all the hydrogen and natural gas you can get a hold of. and you want to do something else, you need another source. sure you can use coal etc, but the point is that just because it was researched last doesn't mean it should be there to be better or replace everything else.

If it were me I would have my power set up to be Hydrogen > Natural Gas > Solar (For everything extra) > Petroleum > Steam > Coal > Dupe

I rarely need to touch my natural gas, but I would gladly welcome having a self sustaining system near the surface which can store and build up energy for other means, Just dig down, use bunker doors or glass, or both run some coolant up there and boom, all that free excess energy that requires little maintenance can be used to run other goodies!

[chemie]

9 minutes ago, BlueLance said:

You are also looking at it a bit backwards, I dont think that it is classed as a late game power source, but a late game addition.

For instance lets say that you are running a mammoth base which eats all the hydrogen and natural gas you can get a hold of. and you want to do something else, you need another source. sure you can use coal etc, but the point is that just because it was researched last doesn't mean it should be there to be better or replace everything else.

If it were me I would have my power set up to be Hydrogen > Natural Gas > Solar (For everything extra) > Petroleum > Steam > Coal > Dupe

I rarely need to touch my natural gas, but I would gladly welcome having a self sustaining system near the surface which can store and build up energy for other means, Just dig down, use bunker doors or glass, or both run some coolant up there and boom, all that free excess energy that requires little maintenance can be used to run other goodies!

more power late game just means more fertilizer makers via geyser water.  Solar would make no sense for the current power levels

[landromat]

23 minutes ago, chemie said:

more power late game just means more fertilizer makers via geyser water.  Solar would make no sense for the current power levels

What if there is no polluted water geysers?

[Risu]

22 minutes ago, chemie said:

more power late game just means more fertilizer makers via geyser water.

And I'm still waiting for gas generators to be nerfed. Again they will be the reason nobody wants to try a new addition which results in it not getting the development it needs.
 

[chemie]

18 minutes ago, landromat said:

What if there is no polluted water geysers?

You make it.  I have always had an excess of water and PW on every map.

Power is never something I lack so I do not see any value in the very low power output solar option

[landromat]

2 minutes ago, chemie said:

You make it.  I have always had an excess of water and PW on every map.

Power is never something I lack so I do not see any value in the very low power output solar option

Make from what? toilets? not enough. CO2? Slicksters ate it all. Guess i will use batteries

[avc15]

solar panels should just be a way to offset some fuel consumption, and not entirely reliable. We want to maintain some realism here.

Comparing a heavily developed asteroid colony to a carefully designed satellite isn't a very apt analogy in this context.

[NurdRage]

3 hours ago, chemie said:

more power late game just means more fertilizer makers via geyser water.  Solar would make no sense for the current power levels

I completely agree... but at the same time i think they're planning for more ultra-power-hungry devices. We're already seeing glimpses of that with the recent addition of the Kiln, uses 1.2kw.

While i would like them to put more power consumers first the producers later, i don't really fault them.

[Lilalaunekuh]

46 minutes ago, NurdRage said:

Kiln, uses 1.2kw

My Kiln runs without power input ... (So was it something klei commented in the live stream ?)

[Giltirn]

3 hours ago, chemie said:

Power is never something I lack

Out of interest, how do you power your bases that you find it so simple? Power is the thing I always struggle on the most.

[0xFADE]

They do have heat radiators on the ISS too.  Though I think they are for the other heat sources rather than for the solar panels.

The radiators do work in the vacuum of space.  They use ammonia and do radiate heat out in to space.

[ThyReaper]

1 hour ago, 0xFADE said:

They do have heat radiators on the ISS too.  Though I think they are for the other heat sources rather than for the solar panels.

The radiators do work in the vacuum of space.  They use ammonia and do radiate heat out in to space.

NASA put out a challenge a few years back of optimizing the ISS's rotation to maintain certain power and heat levels, among other things. The heat on the panels is a serious concern, since they must rely on radiation to cool the craft, which is relatively weak.

[GrindThisGame]

7 hours ago, Soulwind said:

Panels produce power infinitely.  No resource consumption, no dupe time, nothing (except a trivial amount of heat).

Make them too much more powerful than they are and they render every other power generator obsolete. 

And this is mostly true in real life too which is fantastic!

[chemie]

2 hours ago, Giltirn said:

Out of interest, how do you power your bases that you find it so simple? Power is the thing I always struggle on the most.

Early game coal.  Nat gas from geysers and or fertilzers.  Pet gens as backup to NG later.  Main thing is to build power efficiently.  I only pump things once and manage heat well so I only use 2500w of gen 

[avc15]

1 hour ago, GrindThisGame said:

And this is mostly true in real life too which is fantastic!

hmm, actually, in real life you begin to experience massive grid instability when too much of your generation is solar. A problem california policymakers have been paying out the nose to get around for the last 10 years.

Imagine, if there is any "wasted" power (more generated than consumed) some part of your system explodes and catches fire.

Also, if there is any shortfall of power (shown in the game by some equipment just browning out for a moment), some other part of your system explodes and catches fire.

In real life you have to almost exactly match generation to system loading, once every 60th of a second. It is quite a challenging problem, referred to as "balancing". In other words, for every big solar plant you need a big petro plant sitting there ready to turn on. Even if you're not planning on using it, ever, it has to be there.

With lots of solar, you have to invest heavily in grid upgrades, plain old reserve generators, and controls to keep bad things from happening, and the retail prices of energy climb even though you used less water&fuel.

 

--

All back to my upthrust, solar should be unreliable in the game just like real life. It should shut off randomly during the day when our sun is occluded by other asteroids. It should be only partially on (like 20%) at night because of "moonlight" (light reflected from other asteroids).

Solar should help us reduce our fuel and water use but it shouldn't be dependable enough to build an entire electrical system from unless the player builds a massive battery bank.

 

[Oozinator]

5 hours ago, Giltirn said:

Out of interest, how do you power your bases that you find it so simple? Power is the thing I always struggle on the most.

I like to use hydrogen generators too.

[0xFADE]

Once you get heavy in to natural gas with fert makers and other means power is pretty trivialized.  You also get quite a bit of consistent power output from hydrogen once you get electrolyzers running. 

Once you switch in to electrolyzers you can usually run an early base with just them.  Then when you finally get to natural gas you can start running lots of higher power things constantly.

[Man in the Mist]

The setup for Electrolyzers is a bit less than the power a hydrogen generator provides. 

Electrolyzer: 120W
Gas Filter: 120W
Two Gas Pumps: 480 W
Total: 720W

Hydrogen Generator output: 800 W

Get to the point where you can boost the generator's output with microchips and you'll be able to support other things like thermo regulators, two of which require 480 W for a total of 1200 W, exactly the amount a boosted generator provides.

[neoazureus]

24 minutes ago, Man in the Mist said:

The setup for Electrolyzers is a bit less than the power a hydrogen generator provides. 

Electrolyzer: 120W
Gas Filter: 120W
Two Gas Pumps: 480 W
Total: 720W

Hydrogen Generator output: 800 W

Get to the point where you can boost the generator's output with microchips and you'll be able to support other things like thermo regulators, two of which require 480 W for a total of 1200 W, exactly the amount a boosted generator provides.

A Gas filter is not strictly necessary. And with 2 electrolyzer you can use 3 gas pumps (1 for hydrogen and 2 for oxygen);

Electrolyzer: 240 W

3 Gas pumps: 720 W

Total: 960W

Hydrogen Generator output: 1600 W

[Man in the Mist]

The filter is to ensure that only hydrogen goes into the generators.  And yeah, you can have at least two electrolyzer/pump setups use the same system and end up with a lot more power than it uses.

[chemie]

3 hours ago, Oozinator said:

I like to use hydrogen generators too.

Yes...forgot those.  often h2 is enough for most of the cycle if a geyser can supplement electros

[suicide commando]

Personally I think that solar panels can definitely use a big boost to their power output.
 

The reason being: All the other stuff you need to make these work properly. In order for these to work, you need them to be protected against the meteors, so you need to install bunker doors and a meteor sensor grid. Add up the power required to run all this equipment and your solar power panels won't produce enough to run even their own protective systems.

As such, it's basically impossible to 'safely' set up solar panels that produce power, that don't require maintenance or reconstructive work, so you'd be expending dupe time and resources to rebuild your power plant up top every so often.