Are Solar Panels useless?

[mosfet]

My situation right now in survival mode:
My station consumes 1000kW constantly, I have 4 solar panels, 1 small reactor and 1 battery.
The solar panels have a maximum output of 500kW.

- If the battery is turned on it will supply the whole 1000kW alone, the solar panels wont output anything.
- If the battery is turned off the solar panels will supply their 500kW and the small reactor tackles the remaining 500kW.

Shouldnt the solar panels be allways the most preferred power source since its an infinite source? So in my example the solar panels should output their 500kW and if the battery is turned on it should supply the remaining 500kW.
Ultimately the solar panels are useless for me right now because if I want to use their power, I have to turn the battery off and have the reactor handle the remaining power demand...

[SpetS]

120 kW

edit: wait, I mean, each solar panel max output is 120 kw, 4 solar panels well yea, about 480 kW but you rarely get all the Sun power at 100%

[mosfet]

?

[SpetS]

Ok, I see what you are actually asking. I'm also confusing about how power supply works in SE

[mosfet]

mine output about 460kW. of course i simplified the numbers in the example but the principle is the same

[Legas]

Batteries are bugged for a while now.

1) They sometimes bug out the energy priorities (this is likely what you're experiencing)

2) On smart mode, they have both input and output at the same time (why?)

3) Batteries try to charge each other even when it doesn't make sense to do that


Ususally I try to avoid using smart mode, as it bugs out everything, forcing them to either recharge or discharge make them work as intended.

Running a base out of solar power is very hard, you'd need 5 panels at optimal sunlight angle at all times just to run a single refinery (which is hardly enough, unless you like playing waiting simulator 2016)

You're better off mining uranium, since a single 15 min mining trip will net you enough power to run 5+ refineries for real life days.

I use solar panels only as backup power to reduce uranium usage and guarantee that the medbay will never run out of power, I also keep a battery or two fully charged only as backup in case something goes wrong, I don't use them as everyday powersource for obvious reasons.

[Lander1]

I think solar has a break-even point. Consider that the sun is only up for half of the time, so for it to be worth while you need to be generating double the ammount your station is consuming. That extra you generate during daylight hours will need to be stored in batteris for night time.

By the sounds of it you need to build at least 4x to 5x the solar panels you have now, as well as a ton of batteries to store up the power when the sun's out.

A trick I use is to set up some timer blocks to cycle charge batteries at 1 hour intervals, so for example 8 batteries and 4 timer blocks, 2 batteries charge for an hour, then the next 2 , etc... seems to work more efficiently than the batteries "semi-auto" mode.

[Tom7i]

From my expirience, solar power is mostly useful in the beginning when you don't have any uranium yet, so you can power the basic things like medbay and oxygen generator.

Once you get a reactor with enough uranium however, solar power pretty much steps in to the back in regard to usefulness; it is still good to have a couple of panels and a battery for emergencies however, so you're never left dry.

[Jentara]

Look at it this way...Batteries, in this type of situation, are more of a backup. They should be used to store power just in case your reactor craps out, giving you enough time to fix it. (insert whatever scenario you want that would cause this). Solar panels are a nice way to run small stations that you don't want to constantly visit and check on their uranium supply....such as antenna links or remote viewing antennas.

If you have a good source of uranium, there isn't much need for solar panels other than to make your base look eco-friendly :) There are uses and needs for them...it all depends on the situation.

[Twelve]

their behaviour seems to alter depending on if there is a reactor involved or not, if you want auto, delete/turn off the reactor. otherwise you have to manual control.

last i checked if you have just panels + batteries you can leave them on auto and they work. unless they changed it again..

[SpetS]

wow what the heck? I just tested this, and the battery just use full power output and the solar panels add the rest. I never noticed this. I thought it was the other way around.

[mosfet]

Originally posted by SpetS:

wow what the heck? I just tested this, and the battery just use full power output and the solar panels add the rest. I never noticed this. I thought it was the other way around.

yes and in my case the batteries are enough to keep the station powered, so the solar panels wont output anything even though they could work at nearly full capacity.
thats just wasted energy.

i have mined and refined about 50kg of uranium. but after having a small reactor running at about 1mw output for a few minutes about 1kg was already used up. with this speed i would have to mine uranium exclusively. because getting these 50kg took me easily over an hour.
seemed a bit weird that it used so much but idk.

[Lystent]

They are not useless; they are just too weak to power every part of a ship. One of the ways they should have been usefull is that they would be tied to batteries, so durring the time in which the ship is just drifting through space, or the station isn't doing stuff loke smelting, etc, then it charges the batteries; the batteries are there as capcitance. But that method isn't as effective as it should have been; not because the user has to succesfully regulate the ussage of the grid, but because of power grid and battery related bugs.

Originally posted by Legas:

...2) On smart mode, they have both input and output at the same time (why?)...

The original idea was to have the battery carge/recharge automatically by charging when the battery itself is not needed... There is a lot of bug potential in what I just said. Even with a battery-cycling mech., As you said, they are bugged.

We are in the middle of either alpha, or beta phase (hard to tell when they are going back-and-forth so much). The good news is that this is the best possible excuse for them to go and fix the bugs, add new mech.s to make things work better, and rebalance stuff. The bad news is that we do not know if that is on their agenda. But, the other good news is that we can more easily convence them, through our feedback, to go back and make things better. Also, there is a mountain of good/bad news remaining.

[Legas]

Originally posted by Lystent:

Originally posted by Legas:

...2) On smart mode, they have both input and output at the same time (why?)...

The original idea was to have the battery carge/recharge automatically by charging when the battery itself is not needed...

I get the concept, it should work like a laptop battery. However, a battery having both input and output at the same time is clearly a bug.

Either your grid has surplus power, or it doesn't, it can't be both at the same time, so a battery on smart mode should have either input or output and never both at the same time.

Don't even bother to have more than 1 battery on smart, they start charging each other for no apparent reason and wasting a lot of energy in the proccess (a battery has only 80% efficiency when charged by anything other than solar power).

Basically, as it stands, batteries are pretty much only useful for:

1) backup power source (in case the reactor gets damaged or run out of fuel)

2) early game use before finding uranium,

3) or as a buffer for solar power only low energy stations (no more than a single battery in this case).

And as I said, 15 min mining uranium = weeks of power for 5+ refineries, so trying to go "eco-friendly" or "solar only" is pretty much a huge waste of time and whoever says otherwise clearly hasn't played survival long enough to realise this.

[Lystent]

Originally posted by Legas:

Originally posted by Lystent:

The original idea was to have the battery carge/recharge automatically by charging when the battery itself is not needed...

I get the concept, it should work like a laptop battery. However, a battery having both input and output at the same time is clearly a bug.

Either your grid has surplus power, or it doesn't, it can't be both at the same time, so a battery on smart mode should have either input or output and never both at the same time.

Don't even bother to have more than 1 battery on smart, they start charging each other for no apparent reason and wasting a lot of energy in the proccess (a battery has only 80% efficiency when charged by anything other than solar power). ...

I could've sworn there were more bugs when I stated that there was a lot of bug potential, but anyways, 'subject to change' is a very hope-filling concept.

[daemon47]

I like soalr panels.
In fact, I have an entire ship DEDICATED for using soalr panels and batteries. I have two reactors almost always turned off.

It is enourmosly efficent to use soalr panels in 'idle' mode, where your station is doing practically nothing, grvity minimized or off, a few refineries or assemblers on.
Solar panels are worthwhile if you ask me- Especially useful for low-energy cost stations and idling stations.

It lies all in opinion, the amount, the amount used, and desgein