Solar pannels are weak.

[Coolthulhu]

4 hours ago, avc15 said:

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.

Or just stages off heavy consumers by battery%.

Unlike real life, ONI has almost no critical components that have to be up 24/7, so it's completely viable to run only 20% of the colony 100% of the time, with the rest only kicking in during full daylight.

[0xFADE]

Most people appear to have some mindset that electrolyzers have to be in sealed cooled rooms far away from their main base.

If you use an open bottom design and let them go overpressure which is just fine you can get away with a lot less pumps.  I use 2 electrolyzers per 1 pump in 2 separate rooms that feed in to the same pipe network.  Since they spend a lot of time overpressure I may be able to get away with just 1:1.  Either way 1 pump 2 electrolyzers is only 480 watts.  Two of those rooms easily supply more than enough hydrogen to feed a generator with extra left over.

[watermelen671]

Can't wait for the devs to take one look at this and go:

Quote

"Yeah no this has got to end."

And then nat gas will go the way of mealwood. Good early on, absurdly expensive and not worth it later on.

If any devs are reading this, please! We must stop this madness!

#StopAltPowerNeglect2018 #NerfNatGas

[Man in the Mist]

22 minutes ago, 0xFADE said:

Most people appear to have some mindset that electrolyzers have to be in sealed cooled rooms far away from their main base.

It's because of the 70 C output, which is definitely too hot for dupes as well as most other life.  For example, it'll fry dense pufts unless you run it through two thermo regulators.  Maybe three, but that might be a touch too cold.

[0xFADE]

2 minutes ago, Man in the Mist said:

It's because of the 70 C output, which is definitely too hot for dupes as well as most other life.  For example, it'll fry dense pufts unless you run it through two thermo regulators.  Maybe three, but that might be a touch too cold.

I've had them running way before I started cooling my base and I don't think it went much over 50.  Perhaps they don't get as hot because they were never running 100% of the time.  These dense are living right next to electrolyzers and are just fine.

[KittenIsAGeek]

4 minutes ago, Man in the Mist said:

It's because of the 70 C output, which is definitely too hot for dupes as well as most other life.  For example, it'll fry dense pufts unless you run it through two thermo regulators.  Maybe three, but that might be a touch too cold.

Yeah, the temperature thing is huge as time goes on, so I always build my electrolyzers in a way that I can make sure the gas going into my base is at a reasonable temperature (Currently, 18c is my target, but I may change that later).  Also, with the open base design, I've had problems keeping consistent pressures.  I end up using pumps to get the oxygen where it needs to be, so why not use them at the source?  Finally, there's the "hydrogen goes up, carbon dioxide goes down, oxygen stays in the middle" interplay of gasses that can end up really slowing my system down when my base gets large.  If I keep gasses separated as much as possible, then the game doesn't have to do all that work to figure out where each isolated packet is going to drift.

[watermelen671]

11 minutes ago, Man in the Mist said:

It's because of the 70 C output, which is definitely too hot for dupes as well as most other life.  For example, it'll fry dense pufts unless you run it through two thermo regulators.  Maybe three, but that might be a touch too cold.

Have you ever considered using the cool as ice Longhair Slickster?

2 minutes ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

If I keep gasses separated as much as possible, then the game doesn't have to do all that work to figure out where each isolated packet is going to drift.

Spoiler

#GasSegregation 

 

[Neotuck]

I think if they reduce the power requirement of the bunker doors it should balance the system making solar energy effective

[NurdRage]

10 hours ago, Lilalaunekuh said:

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

Sorry my bad, i mean glass forge:)

[0xFADE]

Yet there my base was with Dense pufts living right in the same room as the electrolyzers and the base is in the 30's.  Even when giving counter evidence people keep going with their old assumptions.

24 minutes ago, watermelen671 said:

Have you ever considered using the cool as ice Longhair Slickster?

The longhair slicksters are actually born warmer than pufts and hatches so they in fact take longer to make a Popsicle.

[KittenIsAGeek]

I haven't quite gotten up that far.  Maybe I'll pop into debug and skip a few steps.  I was thinking perhaps to have a couple coal generators up there.  When a shower is imminent, the generators kick on until the blast doors open back up.

1 minute ago, 0xFADE said:

Yet there my base was with Dense pufts living right in the same room as the electrolyzers and the base is in the 30's.  Even when giving counter evidence people keep going with their old assumptions.

I'm not sure how you were doing it, but around 500 cycles, my base always got warm enough that plants would stop growing, dupes would get stressed, etc.  Generally there isn't a problem if I'm running less than 5 or 6 dupes, but by the time I'm late game and I've got 15 to 20 dupes running around, my electrolyzers start adding huge amounts of heat to my base. Sooo.. I keep them cool. Its easy, doesn't take much power (once my system reaches operating temps), and it scales without any extra effort.

Maybe I'm just doing it wrong.  

[0xFADE]

I am using 2 AETN to cool the base down however.

It was getting in the 50's at the generators before I installed the cooling.  But that was 1-200 cycles in by that time.

Around 250-300 I guess.

[KittenIsAGeek]

1 minute ago, 0xFADE said:

I am using 2 AETN to cool the base down however.

I've used AETNs to cool my electrolyzers. Works like a charm.

[Lilalaunekuh]

So if solar panels would work without further interaction I would take the 220W and be happy with it (even if they would be able to supply just one 120W building)

 

BUT right now there is no good way to keep them running without some player interaction to clean up the debris above the panels.

(Getting the debris hot enough that everything will melt and evaporate isn´t really viable)

[0xFADE]

1 minute ago, Lilalaunekuh said:

So if solar panels would work without further interaction I would take the 220W and be happy with it (even if they would be able to supply just one 120W building)

 

BUT right now there is no good way to keep them running without some player interaction to clean up the debris above the panels.

(Getting the debris hot enough that everything will melt and evaporate isn´t really viable)

They will be something interesting to try but like the steam generator mostly ignored.

It sounds like you need way more power investment than the solar panels to protect the solar panels.

The solar panel requires the sensors and the blast doors and cooling and lots more infrastructure in place to make good use of.  Lots of refined metal stuff.

Now pulling that off would be a challenge worth doing but not worth the effort for how much electricity you get from them.

Using shinebugs as a power source sounds more fun.

[Risu]

4 minutes ago, 0xFADE said:

It sounds like you need way more power investment than the solar panels to protect the solar panels.

The power hit from the doors only comes in when meteors are about to hit and all the doors need closed at once. It's not a constant drain.
 

[0xFADE]

3 minutes ago, Risu said:

The power hit from the doors only comes in when meteors are about to hit and all the doors need closed at once. It's not a constant drain.
 

Yeah so likely not as bad as I made it sound but from what Lilalaunekuh is implying just the blast doors isn't enough.  You need to go back up there and mine out the debris left after the meteors.  The debris that is now blocking the power output of your solar panels.

[WanderingKid]

A pic from a series I was thinking of doing about my base builds, then realized I wanted to play with them more until I nailed it down tighter.  It shows a center base build for the electrolizers that is pumped to all corners of the base.

I typically run 4 electrolizers, 5 atmo pumps (all on pressure controls, so not constant energy), a ton of granite, and a fluid based heat sink.  I build it in the center of my base, it feeds off my main power trunk and I pull down the hydrogen towards my main power lines.  I'm still tweaking with how many thermoplates I need to truly control the results, and thinning them down by half except on the heat sink seems to be about right.  That said, it's not an 'awesome' design, but it suits my needs as I tinker with it.  Hopefully it can help give you some ideas.

For those curious about the coolant, I typically end up worrying about it more from sieve water than I do about heating up the base water tower.  I've been tinkering with a few ideas, and so far small mass ice chests seem to be working out rather nicely.  Obviously if you go full bore, you just shove it through an aquatuner and boil some fresh water to boot, but in general I don't even worry about coolant systems for a long while using the temperate water heatsink.

[Lilalaunekuh]

I like the steam turbine / petroleum gen, cause they are challenging to get running without further interaction (even if it´s not full time^^). I wouldn´t say these generators are very usefull right now, but I like the concept:

 Hard to set up and many ways to solve the problems your facing while your getting them running.

 

15 minutes ago, 0xFADE said:

The solar panel requires the sensors and the blast doors and cooling and lots more infrastructure in place to make good use of.  Lots of refined metal stuff.

Now pulling that off would be a challenge worth doing but not worth the effort for how much electricity you get from them

I would consider the heat a "benefit" of solar panels. (I am tinkering with an auqatuner + steam turbine setup that generates energy using the emited heat)

BUT the challenge here is keeping the debris away from your blastdoors (not the setup of the solar grid itself). So is the only way without some fancy magma pumping, to run molten glass in pipes above my blast doors, so that the debris melts. (Yeah but what to do with all the glas / how to get infinite sand if I make the meteorites evaporate)

 

[0xFADE]

18 minutes ago, Lilalaunekuh said:

BUT the challenge here is keeping the debris away from your blastdoors (not the setup of the solar grid itself). So is the only way without some fancy magma pumping, to run molten glass in pipes above my blast doors, so that the debris melts. (Yeah but what to do with all the glas / how to get infinite sand if I make the meteorites evaporate)

It should work.  I think the heat would transfer in to the debris but I'd still rather use the heat from molten glass to boil oil.  I would wonder then if heat would transfer in to any dupes trying to go up there to get metal or whatever.

[Lilalaunekuh]

Sure you can use the molten glass for something more important, but it seems to be the only way to achiev enough hot fluid to keep everything debris free. (Except dig orders ...)

[KittenIsAGeek]

So I did some testing.  Built some solar panels in vacuum and in a biome that touched vacuum.  Turns out the panels are very easy to keep cool.  In pure vacuum, they eventually overheat. However, even a small amount of gas will drop their temperature dramatically.  In my test I dropped a 200kg ball of slime on one of the panels in the area that touched vacuum and the panels quickly cooled down to where they weren't taking damage anymore.

The right panel was at 76c and the left panel at 74c when I dropped the slime.  Within half a cycle both panels are now below 60c.  With the blast doors above the panels closed (meaning the only vacuum was on the left), the temp seemed to stabilize around 60c. With them open, temperatures continued to drop.  In the time it took me to write this, they have dropped to 50c.

[BlueLance]

8 hours ago, Man in the Mist said:

It's because of the 70 C output, which is definitely too hot for dupes as well as most other life.  For example, it'll fry dense pufts unless you run it through two thermo regulators.  Maybe three, but that might be a touch too cold.

My dense pufts live with my electrolyzer set up, it rarely goes above 50 because the gas cools down, I use a bottom open design as well

[watermelen671]

Couldn't one theoretically use the coldness of the surface to cool the oxygen? 

Spoiler

Or would it not work like that? 

 

[Yoma_Nosme]

Just a theory but I think the solar power will be supplemented by helium generators. And the helium will be produced by melting regolith(the surface material or meteor material) so cleaning debris from the blastdoors will make sense