solar panels why?

[Ringus]

What’s the point of solar panels? No power at night... So production stops at night time?

[IamNic]

You use accumulators to store the power during the day to use it during the night.

Of course you need to produce more power during the day than you need, so the accumulators charge.

[Jupiter3927]

Solar panels generate power with no pollution at the cost of space and the obvious 'does not work at night' thing.
No pollution means less biter attacks.
You can run your factory off accumulators for a while if you have enough of them.

I use them when I have a ton of open space I don't know what to do with.

[Lady Naween]

No pollution, no fuel needed, pretty much set up and forget.

Downside no power at night so you need accumulators and they take up a ton of space (but with the map being infinite that isn't exactly a huge problem.).

I tend to spam them like mad in areas where I used to be mining. Sure with the new nuclear reactors there is less need for them than before when we had to rely on solar or coal but still good.

[Mansen]

From a purely efficiency point of view, you really don't need to concern yourself with solar power. It's mostly a way to reduce your pollution footprint and receive less biter attacks from nearby. And of course to have something to do while research flies away.

[Templar]

Originally posted by Linda Hartlen:

No pollution, no fuel needed, pretty much set up and forget.

Downside no power at night so you need accumulators and they take up a ton of space (but with the map being infinite that isn't exactly a huge problem.).

I tend to spam them like mad in areas where I used to be mining. Sure with the new nuclear reactors there is less need for them than before when we had to rely on solar or coal but still good.

The real problem with them are the vast fields of them required for large factories. It is a boring pain to lay down that many solar panels(think 3k) and don't forget the large number of resources required to build that many.

[Lady Naween]

Well you use robots to put them down, if you use a blueprint that has the roboport built in you can just spam em from across the map. true they cost a bit but everything costs resources and solars are at least a one time cost only.

[Jupiter3927]

I got the steam all the way achievement back in v0.14 so you don't have to use solar panels if you set up your power stations correctly.
Fuel is infinite with the solid fuel being craftable from infinite oil.
I was on a ribbon world on a large island when I did it and I cleared all the biters off halfway through so pollution was not a problem.

[Killcreek2]

The other meta advantage to solar power, is the game UPS.
Solar is the least cpu-demanding power source in the game: All the solar panels / accumulators count as 1 combined entity for the behind-the-scenes calculations.

So if your potato is struggling to run your mega factory at full speed, switching to solar-only can help a bit.

[Drumpiedumpie]

No you just switch everything off at night xD

[Jupiter3927]

I guess you could get away with a night time shut down with burner inserters feeding gun turrets.

[Lothos]

lol, 3k....he says that like thats alot :D My last map had 200k panels

[Templar]

Originally posted by lothos:

lol, 3k....he says that like thats alot :D My last map had 200k panels

200k would be 84GW of power..... What kind of science per min were you pulling?

[Death-Guard]

Something really evil to have 200k solar pannel on his base , something that we should not know ^^

[Lothos]

i was only ever using maybe half...I got carried away after several brownouts.

[Templar]

Originally posted by lothos:

i was only ever using maybe half...I got carried away after several brownouts.

Its not straight up 84GW due to charging the accumulators but dam lol.