Solar Power in Space not working

[Cptn.Penguin]

Hi there, I'm super new to the game and playing through the tutorial scenarios.
I'm in the "Learning to Survive" Scenario and after adding a new battery to my starting base, I suddenly can't get anymore solar power. The panels are directly exposed to the sun, but they don't produce any power at all.
I also tried disconnecting everything else (especially the batteries and any ships I had docked nearby) but there still is no power coming from the panels.

Related Screenshot:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1968083314


Edit: Solved! I had powered down a ship connected to the base (with Y), which accidentally turned off all the batteries and solar panels as well. Toggling the blocks back on solved my issues.

[EmberStar]

From the main menu, click "Load" and then "Edit Settings" on your save game. Make sure that you're not in Creative mode. Apparently solar panels and wind turbines don't work completely as expected, because Creative Mode allows batteries to supply infinite energy.

That's the only thing I've seen so far on the forums that might cause this. The previous thread was about Wind Turbines, which don't spin or generate energy in Creative apparently.

If the game is in Survival Mode then something else is weird, and I don't have an immediate guess what that might be. Solar Panels should generate power (green lights) in sunlight even if they aren't touching anything else. (Such as when you annoy an NPC pirate ship and it shoots you until the solar panels fall off.)

[Fitzy]

Sometimes, for reasons that I do not know, things just stop working, I'm not being funny when I say this but turning the grid off (for say 30 seconds) and then back on, can cause them to function properly.

They may have been switched off in the control panel individually for some reason, I've had that happen, I've also caught things in groups by mistake and switched things off that way.

If none of that works, it's a replacement of the panels that will be needed, sometimes grinding them down to the hack level and back up will work.

[fwings263]

Your Solar Panels have red lights, go into the control panel and turn them on.

[SpeedDaemon]

Originally posted by fwings263:

Your Solar Panels have red lights, go into the control panel and turn them on.

Yep... did you by chance dock another craft to the station grid, and use the "power off" hotkey on that ship? That will power off everything. ("power off grid" and "parking brake" are two hotkeys you should never, ever use in space engineers due to the problems they'll cause with connected grids)

[Cptn.Penguin]

Originally posted by fwings263:

Your Solar Panels have red lights, go into the control panel and turn them on.

Ah, so red means they're turned off?

Originally posted by SpeedDaemon:

Originally posted by fwings263:

Your Solar Panels have red lights, go into the control panel and turn them on.

Yep... did you by chance dock another craft to the station grid, and use the "power off" hotkey on that ship? That will power off everything. ("power off grid" and "parking brake" are two hotkeys you should never, ever use in space engineers due to the problems they'll cause with connected grids)

I sure did! turned off a ship I had connected to the base. I didn't know it would turn everything else off as well!

[Jack Schitt]

Originally posted by Wall-Nut:

Hi there, I'm super new to the game and playing through the tutorial scenarios.
I'm in the "Learning to Survive" Scenario and after adding a new battery to my starting base, I suddenly can't get anymore solar power. The panels are directly exposed to the sun, but they don't produce any power at all.
I also tried disconnecting everything else (especially the batteries and any ships I had docked nearby) but there still is no power coming from the panels.

Related Screenshot:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1968083314

I don't see a battery or any power source on that grid and that's what the red lights mean: no power. I'm going to play quick and see if Solar Panels need power. I'm not sure they do because they provide power and if that's the case that they don't need power...this situation is a weird bug.

In the mean time, have you tried restarting the game? What I mean by that is exiting the game completely and re-launching it.

[EmberStar]

Originally posted by Wall-Nut:

Originally posted by fwings263:

Your Solar Panels have red lights, go into the control panel and turn them on.

Ah, so red means they're turned off?

Originally posted by SpeedDaemon:

Yep... did you by chance dock another craft to the station grid, and use the "power off" hotkey on that ship? That will power off everything. ("power off grid" and "parking brake" are two hotkeys you should never, ever use in space engineers due to the problems they'll cause with connected grids)

I sure did! turned off a ship I had connected to the base. I didn't know it would turn everything else off as well!

For space ships and all stations, it's a good idea to add toolbar actions for each connector to set to "switch lock." This will let you release a connector individually. Hitting 'P' will toggle *every* connector on the grid, potentially disconnecting all of your docked ships. D:

And using 'Y' to shut off a ship has an additional problem. By default, the Trash Cleanup routine will completely delete unpowered grids if you get more than 500m from them. I think this has caused people grief, especially if they follow the Good.Bot tutorial tip about shutting off the Survival Pod to save power. Turn off ship, fly away to mine and return to find the ship missing.

[Cptn.Penguin]

Originally posted by EmberStar:

For space ships and all stations, it's a good idea to add toolbar actions for each connector to set to "switch lock." This will let you release a connector individually. Hitting 'P' will toggle *every* connector on the grid, potentially disconnecting all of your docked ships. D:

And using 'Y' to shut off a ship has an additional problem. By default, the Trash Cleanup routine will completely delete unpowered grids if you get more than 500m from them. I think this has caused people grief, especially if they follow the Good.Bot tutorial tip about shutting off the Survival Pod to save power. Turn off ship, fly away to mine and return to find the ship missing.

Oh no! Thanks for telling me, that will probably save me a lot of grief.

[Jack Schitt]

Originally posted by Wall-Nut:

Originally posted by fwings263:

Your Solar Panels have red lights, go into the control panel and turn them on.

Ah, so red means they're turned off?

Originally posted by SpeedDaemon:

Yep... did you by chance dock another craft to the station grid, and use the "power off" hotkey on that ship? That will power off everything. ("power off grid" and "parking brake" are two hotkeys you should never, ever use in space engineers due to the problems they'll cause with connected grids)

I sure did! turned off a ship I had connected to the base. I didn't know it would turn everything else off as well!

Aha! Looks like this is resolved. Apologies. My connection acts weird sometimes. That reply wasn't here when I replied.

[Cptn.Penguin]

Originally posted by Jack Schitt:

Aha! Looks like this is resolved. Apologies. My connection acts weird sometimes. That reply wasn't here when I replied.

No worries, thanks for replying anyway.

[tcross1313]

hi, having problem with solar power, got them set up to my starter base and no power, green light but control panel don't even show them being hook to the base, never had this problem before. any idles why? does the blocks need to be built all the way now?

[Jack Schitt]

The panels them selves have to be built completely, what they're attached to doesn't. That is shown and taught in the first "tutorial" mission.

[tcross1313]

ty, I am new at this but know that, thought they might have change something but, i found the problem and it was on me when i was taking out a block did not notice it took out two and broken the line of blocks. thank you for answering my post.