No electric charge, but solar panels are working

[stealthyshiroean]

Okay...so maybe I don't completely understand what's up, but I have solar panels and they are saying that they are getting direct sunlight. I have rechargeable batteries on this probe as well, but for some reason I ran out of electric charge.

What I had did was send a probe into deep space. Originally just to get science data from high over the sun, but then I changed my mind while I was fooling with maneuver nodes along the orbit. I ended up finding a Duna encounter, but now I can't do anything to try and get myself in position because I have no electric charge.

Is there anything I can do or is this just a derelict space probe now?

[Rioka]

How deep is "deep space"? Solar panels generate less power the farther they are from the sun.

[stealthyshiroean]

Okay, yeah, not really "deep". It's running about the same orbit distance as Kerbin is from the Sun.

[crezeh]

Are your solar panels visibly getting sunlight? If you have rather few of them, and they're only barely getting a small glint of sunlight, they might not produce enough to keep up with the electicity demand.

[stealthyshiroean]

It's telling me that they are getting direct sunlight. It's kind of funny because now I have power again in the one probe. Although, this other probe I have now has the same problem...

[crezeh]

Originally posted by AJSA stealthyshiroean:

It's telling me that they are getting direct sunlight. It's kind of funny because now I have power again in the one probe. Although, this other probe I have now has the same problem...

The tooltip isn't that reliable. Solar panels get a variable amount of power depending on how much light they're getting. But the tooltip says "direct sunlight" even if you're getting next to no power.

[Zombo]

Your panels can be blocked by planets and moons if they are between you and the sun. Even if they are far away. And you must turn the panels to face the sun, unless they are able to rotate on their own to do so.
And you must have enough panels to meet the draw your craft is demanding. Not all panels will generate the same power depending on the angle they sit, compared to the direction of incoming light.

It sounds to me like you probably dont have enough panels that can face the sun at the same time.

edit, read the percentage or power the panel produces to see how much power a panel is giving based on its angle to the light. A panel facing the sun perfectly, will produce 98% or so.

[dunbaratu]

The thing I don't understand about the description of the situation is this:

If your probe core is out of power, that disables almost everything you can do with the vessel, including bringing up the rightclick menus on parts.

So.... how are you reading the display that claims the solar panels are getting sunlight?

At any rate, it's possible to remain out of power because you left something turned on that drains power, and the power drain rate exceeds the solar panel recharge rate, so the moment the solar panels attempt to add power to the batteries, it immediately drains away into whatever it was you left turned on. Did you leave the craft with SAS turned on?

[Gertjan]

the tooltip on the probe cores indeed shows that there isn't enough power, the same it true for the SAS modules.
however, as long as your resources menu still shows power, there is no problem

[stealthyshiroean]

Thanks for all the help. And I think it was because I time warped really quickly but didn't bother having the solar panels always facing directly to the sun. So, as many of you have said, it probably didn't get the right amount of power. Also, @madings, my science equipment was inoperable, but I could still click on the solar panels to see if they were working or not. I just couldn't do anything else such as piloting, changing thrust, etc.