Electricity; batteries, solar panels, best way to power your base?

[The FogDog]

I have a large array of solar panels hooked up to three Lead-Acid Battery Clusters.
The current power consumption is ca. 180 The IDEA is that during the day the (19 now) solar panels run the base electrics and charge (19x25=475 (so nearly 300 spare..) the batteries.

However, this is mostly not the case..
I have tried parallel connection, serial connection.. Is there a preferred way in-game?
Does the game detect this? Whats the logic behind power consumption from batteries; drain one then next or equal drain from all if parallel?

I know one solution is to just have smaller clusters powering different sections of the base but I like the Idea of a centralised hub.

[thedevilfrog]

my mate has a similar set up, he couldn't get it working properly either :/

[oGLITCHo]

I couldn't get wind generators to work after 1 day either.

[Emperor Fooble]

Given how readily one can get gasoline, I've given up on more advanced energy generation in favour of the humble diesel generators.

The solar panels produce so little, require a lot of setup and a maze of wiring, and yet they seem broken, or batteries just are not storing much energy long term.
Diesel gens are just cheap and easy and each one produces the power of a dozen solar panels.

[The FogDog]

Originally posted by Emperor Fooble:

Given how readily one can get gasoline, I've given up on more advanced energy generation in favour of the humble diesel generators.

The solar panels produce so little, require a lot of setup and a maze of wiring, and yet they seem broken, or batteries just are not storing much energy long term.
Diesel gens are just cheap and easy and each one produces the power of a dozen solar panels.

yep, the diesel generators are very good. the basic pump generates enough fuel to run a base for a while.
i forgot to mention that i am running a diesel parallel to the 3 batteries too, just to be able to have enough power.. which is strange as the batteries stores 160,000 and one is always full, one empty and one going between half and 1/4 full but barely either barely spits out more than 80 each

[ZanyScum]

Not sure if this helps in any way, but I found this:

Originally posted by RekoHart:

Battery says its output capacity is X/500, but I can only get it to put out 250.

[ZanyScum]

Oh, and this:

Originally posted by BNR32FAN:

ok i figured out the problem. the small lead acid batteries do not allow 36 volts of charge to go into them so i had to remove them from the circuit and that fixed the problem because the larger lead acid battery clusters will allow more then 36 volts to go into them from a charging source. ive heard they allow up to 80 volts of input charge, not sure if that number is correct but it fixed my problem.

[sdrevik]

Originally posted by Emperor Fooble:

Given how readily one can get gasoline, I've given up on more advanced energy generation in favour of the humble diesel generators.

The solar panels produce so little, require a lot of setup and a maze of wiring, and yet they seem broken, or batteries just are not storing much energy long term.
Diesel gens are just cheap and easy and each one produces the power of a dozen solar panels.

Agreed, I'm only level 32 or so, and the idea of 750+ shards for 10 solar panels to get enough power to power one mine (vs one diesel gen) is just insane.

[SylenThunder]

I just use solar and wind to charge up an array of batteries. If I'm offline long enough for the generators to run out of gas, the batteries will kick in and power everything for a while. It's fine for a backup solution, but not ideal at all for main power.

[narokusama]

Use 10 wind generators per advanced mine and and well. No problem cause generally they produce a surplus of energy. I separate them each by a one foundation width.

one oil run to the desert is nearly a week of fuel for several generators. Next task is powering all those maze traps sustainably on wind energy. Think my initial expectation was 64 wind turbines