Solar Panels are fake!

[Bobmin357]

So there I am, out in the middle of no where, over 100 klicks from my base, installing another communications relay. No big deal, I've installed 2 others earlier, no problem.

Well until this time. The relay isn't much, an antenna, a control pad, a remote control, a rotating light/navigational warning, a rotor and 3 solar panels attached to a rotor.

Now I have everything built and I set the rotor to move from 0 to 315 which should give it a really good blast of sunlight, only thing is the rotor went the wrong way. The panels lost power and now are sitting nearly perpendicular to the sun.

Sigh...

Ok, lets move my utility ship closer and turn on the 11 large forward facing spotlights so they are hitting the panels. Strange, the light from the spotlights didn't seem to power up the solar panels.

I finally managed to get panels oriented properly after turning off everything on the relay but the rotor and solar panels and a little pushing while in my vacc suit.

What I find strange is that 11 large ship spotlights less than 20 meters from the three solar panels had no effect on the output wattage. I guess they aren't kidding when Keen called them solar panels. Photovoltaic they are not.

[DarkExcalibur42]

They only charge off the sun, yeah. Would be interesting if they could pick up some minor charge from other light sources.

[Beta Mark]

Even though you and I see light from both sources (the sun and the spotlights), there is a wide spectrum of light and energy that the sun emits which the spotlights do not.

On the RP side, I'd say to just imagine that 1) it would take too long to charge up solar from spotlights and 2) the spotlights are specifically configured to only emit visible light and therefore don't charge panels.

From a code perspective, those damned spotlights already do enough damage to FPS and simspeed and I don't want ray casting calculations for photons to be added to my cpu/gpu to try and figure out if a spotlight is powering a solar panel :-D

[DarkExcalibur42]

Originally posted by mccorkle:

From a code perspective, those damned spotlights already do enough damage to FPS and simspeed and I don't want ray casting calculations for photons to be added to my cpu/gpu to try and figure out if a spotlight is powering a solar panel :-D

Hahhahaha! Yeaaaah.... that's true.

[VanGoghComplex]

A little lame for lack of realism, and I get the irritation at the flaw, but honestly why would you want to do that anyway? You'll invariably use more power than you produce.

[DarkExcalibur42]

Originally posted by VanGoghComplex:

A little lame for lack of realism, and I get the irritation at the flaw, but honestly why would you want to do that anyway? You'll invariably use more power than you produce.

Just like in what happened above. Something is damaged or just not quite facing the right way. Flash some lights at it so you can get it to turn.

Or imagine salvaging a ship that's dead in space. No power, so conveyor system is offline, the reactor is inaccessible, and the solar panel is facing away from the sun. Flash your high beams at it, throw some U in the reactor and now you've got it working again!

[VanGoghComplex]

Originally posted by DarkExcalibur42:

Originally posted by VanGoghComplex:

A little lame for lack of realism, and I get the irritation at the flaw, but honestly why would you want to do that anyway? You'll invariably use more power than you produce.

Just like in what happened above. Something is damaged or just not quite facing the right way. Flash some lights at it so you can get it to turn.

Or imagine salvaging a ship that's dead in space. No power, so conveyor system is offline, the reactor is inaccessible, and the solar panel is facing away from the sun. Flash your high beams at it, throw some U in the reactor and now you've got it working again!

Okay, good point. I hadn't taken the MacGuyver Factor into account. XD

[DarkExcalibur42]

Originally posted by VanGoghComplex:

Okay, good point. I hadn't taken the MacGuyver Factor into account. XD

That's my favorite factor of any game ^_^

[DarkExcalibur42]

But seriously, MacGuyvering your way through this game? That's half of why I want pressurization added... I want to have challenging survival puzzle worlds where you get a box of rocks and left stranded in some facility and are told "Okay! Don't die."

[zgrssd]

Originally posted by Bobmin357:

What I find strange is that 11 large ship spotlights less than 20 meters from the three solar panels had no effect on the output wattage. I guess they aren't kidding when Keen called them solar panels. Photovoltaic they are not.

A relevant portion of the Solar Panels input comes from the Infrared Spectrum. Wich is why they continue to work while clouded.
The main reason to go away from the lightbulb was that it produced 95% waste heat & IR for the 5% of visible light.

The reason LED are that energy effective and durable are that they do not produce EM-radiation in a spectrum we don't need. They do not waste energy on unwanted spectra.
We can asume they continue to use LED, or something as spectrum specfic as LED in SE.

Trying to power a Solar Panel with a LED is like trying to move a ship by pushing it with your astronaut in a Vac suit.

Also, actually having to include Light sources in the energy production would be several levels more complex.
Even just that one shadow cast by that static light source eats quite a few computing resources.

[DarkExcalibur42]

Originally posted by zgrssd:

Trying to power a Solar Panel with a LED is like trying to move a ship by pushing it with your astronaut in a Vac suit.

Which works great so long as you're not hosting >.<

[AlexMBrennan]

Just like in what happened above. Something is damaged or just not quite facing the right way. Flash some lights at it so you can get it to turn.

That is a really miraculously brilliant invention, and I'm sure it will replace jumper cables any day now.

Seriously though, if you build a spacecraft that can *only* be powered by solar panels (i.e. no reactor, no way to charge it from the power grid, no way to attach batteries - which btw doesn't depend on power; you can just add a merge block to the dead craft, charge a battery on your main ship, attach a merge block to the battery and attach that to the dead craft) then *you* failed at engineering.

[johntarmac]

Should've read the instructions, you want Spotlight Panels and not Solar Panels.

[MajorMurderer]

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

you can just add a merge block to the dead craft, charge a battery on your main ship, attach a merge block to the battery and attach that to the dead craft

Question, how would one merge the battery to the ship if there's nothing powering the merge block? 0.-

Also, was kinda disappointed when I found out I couldn't do this either. I mean hell, calculators have solar panels that work with indoor lighting

[SolarScavenger]

Still, a fun mental exercise.

[Bobmin357]

There seems to be a lot of debate about attaching extra hardware. This was a communications relay. I had gone out with the intention of deploying four of them. It's a pretty basic design, a few blocks, some solar panels, rotors, RC block, antenna. The ship I used to go out to each location had enough supplies for four relays and it doesn't contain a merge block.

As to the concept of solar panels working in the infra-red... please, even Nasa doesn't deploy such limited solar panels, if anything they would be broad spectrum panels capable of absorbing light in a wide range, not a narrow one. While I didn't expect the solar panels to be capable of powering the entire relay from the spotlights, it was only logical to assume they were photovoltaic cells that would generate something.

The fact that light from 11 large spotlights failed to generate a single watt of power just highlighted the fact that these are not photovoltaic cells, and only sunlight makes them work. Mind you, here on earth, today, photovoltaic cells and solar cells are interchangeable words for the same thing. A device that converts light from ANY source to electricity. Apparently in 2077 they decided that only light from the sun will do.

It was an annoying lesson to learn and I suppose I could have ground down the cells and replaced them. In retrospect I suppose I should have, but then I wouldn't have discovered that solar panels aren't real either.