Question about solar panels.

[Yoda Nobunaga]

If I have a ton of solar panels and also steam engines will the engines slow down during the day to accommodate the solar panels or are they always at full steam?

[Solark]

Steam engines will regulate their intake of steam to match how much power they need to produce, so yes, they will slow down if you have enough solar panels to make a difference.

Just a quick note about nuclear in case it's needed, while steam turbines of nuclear reactors will also slow down to give way to solar, they will effectively not consume less fuel like boilers heating water for steam engines would, since the reactor itself consumes fuel at a fixed rate and produces a fixed amount of heat to be turned into steam.

[DCYW]

Your solar panels needs something to charge and release energy for electricity like accumulators but need heaps (loads) of them to meet power requirement compared to steam power with boilers fill of any fuel type.

Depending how many solar panels you had will charge up those accumulators in the daytime and releases the electric energy at night. May need some circuit networking for this matter like SR latches to control the charge flow rate., examples on youtube.

[AlexMBrennan]

If I have a ton of solar panels and also steam engines will the engines slow down during the day to accommodate the solar panels or are they always at full steam?

Have you considered looking at the game to find out the answer since you have already built the solar panels?

[Jupiter3927]

Steam turbines only consume steam when the power grid needs it.
They're prioritized over accumulators.

[Yoda Nobunaga]

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

If I have a ton of solar panels and also steam engines will the engines slow down during the day to accommodate the solar panels or are they always at full steam?

Have you considered looking at the game to find out the answer since you have already built the solar panels?

First of all, you're assuming I did build them. Second of all, you're assuming that I didn't check.

I did make them and I did check and even still this Discussion has been helpful anyway so be nice.

[DCYW]

Originally posted by Yoda Nobunaga:

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

Have you considered looking at the game to find out the answer since you have already built the solar panels?

First of all, you're assuming I did build them. Second of all, you're assuming that I didn't check.

I did make them and I did check and even still this Discussion has been helpful anyway so be nice.

We all know that you built them, we are saying that solar panels by itself are useless without accumulators.

There is nothing for the night to store your solar energy by your solar panels. Solar power runs out off energy faster than steam. You will get energy power from your accumulators instead directly from those panels.

[Jupiter3927]

They're not useless without accumulators, they just don't do anything at night.
It's possible to shut down your factory at night using the circuit network and an accumulator to keep your defenses running off steam power if you really wanted to.
It's not a great idea but it's something to do.

[Modran]

Originally posted by DCYW:

... we are saying that solar panels by itself are useless without accumulators.

Not necessarily, panels without accumulators during the day can already reduce the pollution dramatically.

[Yoda Nobunaga]

I mean I just have both the steam power and the solar panels so that my pollution is down during the day. I'm not worried and I know about accumulators. My aim was to reduce pollution by having the panels take over during the day and the thread was to ask if that'll slow the boilers down (which it does) because if it didn't then the whole reason to switch for me would be null.

I'll remember the comment about the nuclear thing too. I wouldn't have thought about that.

[DCYW]

Originally posted by Modran:

Originally posted by DCYW:

... we are saying that solar panels by itself are useless without accumulators.

Not necessarily, panels without accumulators during the day and boilers during the night can already reduce the pollution dramatically.

Yeah nah bro, just noticed that solar power is the cleanest power source in the game by far.

[Yoda Nobunaga]

Originally posted by DCYW:

Originally posted by Modran:

Not necessarily, panels without accumulators during the day and boilers during the night can already reduce the pollution dramatically.

Yeah nah bro, just noticed that solar power is the cleanest power source in the game by far.

He makes a good point. If your solar panels handle all of the power load during the day then you cut your pollution from electricity in half at least, AND solar panels are still working at a low rate during the evening and early morning so it's more like two thirds.

[Jupiter3927]

Nuclear power is no pollution and takes up very little space.
It's worth figuring out.

Solar's advantage against it is its ease of setup.
I think there's a UPS boost for solar too.

[Yoda Nobunaga]

Originally posted by Jupiter3927:

Nuclear power is no pollution and takes up very little space.
It's worth figuring out.

Solar's advantage against it is its ease of setup.
I think there's a UPS boost for solar too.

What is UPS?

[DCYW]

Originally posted by Yoda Nobunaga:

I mean I just have both the steam power and the solar panels so that my pollution is down during the day. I'm not worried and I know about accumulators. My aim was to reduce pollution by having the panels take over during the day and the thread was to ask if that'll slow the boilers down (which it does) because if it didn't then the whole reason to switch for me would be null.

I'll remember the comment about the nuclear thing too. I wouldn't have thought about that.

Nuclear might hurt your weak armour when playing with mods.

[Jupiter3927]

Updates per second.
It tries to stick to 60 to match the framerate.
It will dip down if there's a lot going on at once, like a huge biter attack just started or you have a few thousand bots flying around your screen.