Are solar panels worth building at all?

[ClearlyHopeless]

They produce so little power each and the price compared to even just a steam engine is way higher, so why use them? By the time I started running into problems with my starting steam set-up I would have had to produce hundreds of them to fix it or just work on nuclear power. So when am I meant to use solar panels? Are they ever worth the cost? New player here just trying to learn the game.

[Galileus]

They produce "free" (of pollution) power for the cost of space used. That means you do not need a miner upkeep and do not need to spend as much on ammo production due to lower levels of biter aggro and evolution. They are also much, much easier to set up - no Kovarex, no fuel and steam et.c.

If they are "worth" it depends on you. Me, I like setting up steam setups and absolutely despise creating huge fields of solars. I know players who absolutely adore building insanely big solar fields and basking in all the clean energy. As per resource value? Again, depends on how you quantify it. There might be bigger cost to craft, though at later stages of the game you should be able to craft infinite solars without caring much about that. There is the upkeep cost to consider as well, and cost to clear the space for solar fields as well as increase to the cost of defensive upkeep for steam and nuclear...

Beauty of Factorio is, you get to choose which parts of it are worth to it to you. Though no doubt someone will comment in approximately three seconds his "ultimate mathematically optimal correct and gospel" view which is the only possible way to play the game and you will have to stick to it or else ;)

[Hedning]

Nuclear power is better, but you only need steam power to launch the rocket.
Neither nuclear nor solar is worth it if you are just launching one rocket.

Expanding your base after the rocket however the cost becomes less significant.
Using blueprints with roboports and radars included lets you expand very easily. Solar can be a good complement to nuclear, especially when you have large unused areas between your mines.

At the very end-game solar is the best power source because it doesn't tax your cpu. All panels and accumulators are basically treated like one big entity and doesn't need much calculation.

[Fel]

It depends on your goal.

For a new player, launching a rocket is the goal, so solar is just a way to get a power generator that doesn't produce pollution or consume anything to produce power but takes a lot of space and initial resources.

Solar pannels really shine for those that push the game to its limits by building what we call a mega factory, beyond the first rocket launch.
For those, solar pannels are the best because they have the least impact on UPS (updates per second) out of all of the power generators (they don't have flowing water and steam, which is what makes both steam methods worse for that).

Solar pannels can also be good for powering very out-of-the-way things that don't require much power, but it's usually not that hard to just draw a line of power poles either.

[shadain597]

Another thing worth mentioning is that solar is great for reducing the risk of brownouts spiraling into a complete blackout. If you're using boilers or nuclear, the fuel supply getting cut (whether by biters or player mistakes) can potentially shut the whole factory down, which can be disastrous if you are still getting hit by biter waves.

You don't have to switch over to solar entirely to benefit from it; a common mistake people make is thinking that solar is an all-or-nothing investment, when really it's a sliding scale. Solar has power priority, so however much the panels are producing is that much less power that your boilers don't have to produce, reducing both fuel consumption and pollution production. Nuclear is a bit more complicated, because it burns fuel at a set rate regardless of the power draw from it; there's ways to control it so that it isn't wasted, but that's a bit beyond the scope of this thread, I think.

[Hedning]

Originally posted by Fel:

Solar pannels can also be good for powering very out-of-the-way things that don't require much power, but it's usually not that hard to just draw a line of power poles either.

I use it a lot for radars.

Originally posted by shadain597:

there's ways to control it so that it isn't wasted, but that's a bit beyond the scope of this thread, I think.

And completely useless since nuclear fuel is basically free.

[Khagan]

As I have said elsewhere, solar power is an expensive luxury: if you have ask how much it costs, you can't afford it. The capital cost is about 20 times that of coal, oil or nuclear power, and it takes a very long time indeed to pay that back by fuel savings. But if you are building a large megabase (i.e. several kspm) and care more about UPS than resource cost, it may be the right choice.

[Emaulligu]

I like them early game because it allows you to slow down or even completely halt your coal consumption during the day, which makes you pollute less.
Unless it's just an impression because you still have to use drills to produce them etc, so in the end I don't know how much of a difference it makes if any.
I guess you can see it as an increase of iron and copper consumption to lessen your coal consumption.

I'm also the type of person who won't mind building tremendous panel + accumulator fields so I can run my factory clean, especially during the long idle phases where everything is stacked while I'm building the next factory branch.

[Chindraba]

"Worth building?" is always best answered with the proverbial "It depends."

There is an achievement, "Steam all the way," for not building even one. There's also an achievement, "Solaris," for building a bunch. (As a note, the Steam all the way means not building on in the factory, you can have a machine make thousands and you can use them in making the solar power for the armor's grid, just not "build" one on the ground.)

The point in the game where they will make the biggest difference is once your computer starts running the game slower because of all the calculations it has to do for each update. That, in turn depends on how big you map is, how you have built things, how good your computer is, and what else your computer is doing (Steam app, browser, spreadsheets, etc.) while you're also playing the game.

They are, when you need them, slower than winter tree sap to get set up. They are very expensive. They take a long time to craft. They consume huge amounts of land to use. That land issue actually has two problems, one commonly mentioned, the other not. The common problem is that you have to clear biters, use landfill, and remove cliffs and trees, to build the massive arrays. The often forgotten issue is later, after the base grows past where you built it, you have to go around it every time you need to get to the other side. Trains, cars, tanks, and if you still do it, the character on foot all have to go ALL the way around the thing. They are so large that it's even possible to make images you can view from the map using them.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2949535009

When, and if, someone decides they can afford them, or have to use them, they do have some benefits, all covered above. They don't require any support - no finding more coal or uranium to keep it powered. You can build a solar grid, plug it in, and forget about it. That's an extra bit of "peace of mind" which has it's own price. Though not as effective as a massive grid, you can also place them anywhere. Filling in random spots in factories, or between them, with one or a dozen, won't add much to the power system, but done often it will add up. You can't do that with nuclear at all, and it takes much more work to try doing that with regular steam.

They work great for remote setups. 40 panels, along with the 34 accumulators to match, can power a group of 18 electric miners, which is enough coal to keep your steam plant (20 boiler max per pump) fired up under full load. That guarantees that no matter what you do to cause a brownout in the factory, your production of electricity won't be affected. And, when the local coal runs out, you can make a new patch work without having to make more steam to run it. Of course, in that case, the lower pollution won't matter much - the miners are making so much on their own that what's saved by solar won't matter to the bugs.

The bugs are another reason I'll use them sort of early. I like to build radar outposts outside my wall. Make an early warning system for defense, and get a better look at where I might need to expand next. Radar is a "military" target, so any random bug that gets close will automatically attack the radar, and some of the solar panels while they're at it. Still, if I pick where to put it carefully, I have had some last for several days. One solar panel will also power a remote pumpjack so I can set up a line of flamethrowers without having to transport oil, by train or pipe, from somewhere else, and I don't have to drag a line of power poles across empty space. The poles aren't hard to drag or expensive to make, but when I start building in the area I have to remember to NOT disconnect my defense system. The solar powered oil supply means I can't loose my base to biters just because I forgot to replace one power pole.

[shadain597]

Originally posted by Emaulligu:

I like them early game because it allows you to slow down or even completely halt your coal consumption during the day, which makes you pollute less.
Unless it's just an impression because you still have to use drills to produce them etc, so in the end I don't know how much of a difference it makes if any.
I guess you can see it as an increase of iron and copper consumption to lessen your coal consumption.

I crunched the numbers awhile back and, assuming my math was more-or-less correct, it takes roughly 3/4 of an hour for a solar panel to "break even" on pollution while your main source of power is coal-fired boilers.

[knighttemplar1960]

Since you have to build a few to run your first few upgraded armors (they are a requirement for personal solar panels) the answer is yes. For the rest (as most everyone else has mentioned) it depends on your goals. If you want to make sure that you don't run out of power at night you can hook a bank of solar panels up to the miners on a coal patch and then buffer the coal in chests that feed your boilers using burner inserters. The solar powered miners will produce enough coal to run your steam engines both day and night with out fear of a cascading brown out. If you are good about watching your power production this is not needed.

[Нагризолич]

They have little to no load on your CPU, but you're not likely to run into that problem for some time. Solar power is a great post-launch option.

[Vyndicu]

Originally posted by shadain597:

I crunched the numbers awhile back and, assuming my math was more-or-less correct, it takes roughly 3/4 of an hour for a solar panel to "break even" on pollution while your main source of power is coal-fired boilers.

I wish I were joking, but I have encountered people who play Factorio and think that solar panels are a colossal waste of time despite being capable of reducing how much pollution exists on the map and indirectly reducing how many biters will spawn from less pollution.

Fewer biters attacking your wall indirectly saves you ammo/energy/oil (depending on which turrets you use).

The same can be said of switching to electric furnaces and solar panels as the primary energy source instead of staying on stone/steel furnaces indefinitely.


Nuclear Energy is a mixed bag as it generates pollution from mining iron and uranium ore plus sulfuric acid processing in exchange for plenty of energy. Very few people go to total Nuclear Energy for a megabase due to the heavy computing load from all those fluid boxes.

[Fel]

Many people prefer a more direct approach when it comes to bitters, which is destroying any nest that could be sending attacks in the near future.
It saves even more ammo/energy/oil than simply reducing the scale of attacks.

[shadain597]

Originally posted by Vyndicu:

Originally posted by shadain597:

I crunched the numbers awhile back and, assuming my math was more-or-less correct, it takes roughly 3/4 of an hour for a solar panel to "break even" on pollution while your main source of power is coal-fired boilers.

I wish I were joking, but I have encountered people who play Factorio and think that solar panels are a colossal waste of time despite being capable of reducing how much pollution exists on the map and indirectly reducing how many biters will spawn from less pollution.

Yep, generally the same folks who tell new players to avoid efficiency modules. Since it's not the way they choose to handle that game element, they have to push back against others using it.

Nuclear Energy is a mixed bag as it generates pollution from mining iron and uranium ore plus sulfuric acid processing in exchange for plenty of energy. Very few people go to total Nuclear Energy for a megabase due to the heavy computing load from all those fluid boxes.

I mean, the amount of pollution for the nuclear power output is pretty small, especially if the miners have some efficiency mods and/or mining productivity research. Though, to be fair, nuclear also has a huge up-front cost in materials/pollution. As far as the nuclear UPS-thing, I've actually looked around the mod portal for a liquid-less heat exchanger (or equivalent building) to use in nuclear plants, but haven't found one. I've found a few mods that might be able to play a similar role, but nothing that specifically replaces the liquid-hungry heat exchangers in the nuclear plants.

Originally posted by Fel:

Many people prefer a more direct approach when it comes to bitters, which is destroying any nest that could be sending attacks in the near future.
It saves even more ammo/energy/oil than simply reducing the scale of attacks.

It's not really an "either-or" situation though. The more pollution the factory produces, the bigger the pollution cloud. The bigger the pollution cloud, the larger an area you'd have to keep clear. And reducing pollution kinda uniquely slows down evolution, whereas destroying nests anywhere remotely close to the factory speeds up evolution.

There's a variety of ways to address the biter problem, even within the same settings/mods, and as long as it gets the job done it's not wrong.

[Hedning]

Originally posted by Vyndicu:

I wish I were joking, but I have encountered people who play Factorio and think that solar panels are a colossal waste of time

Fewer biters attacking your wall indirectly saves you ammo/energy/oil (depending on which turrets you use).

The same can be said of switching to electric furnaces and solar panels as the primary energy source instead of staying on stone/steel furnaces indefinitely.

I'd be one of those. Both solar and electric furnaces are a colossal waste of time if you are only going for one rocket.

Steel furnaces can last well into post rocket as long as you have convenient access to coal/solid fuel and are not ready to start moduling the furnaces, which you shouldn't do for a good while because there are much higher priority targets for the modules.

If you have a wall that should be with flamethrowers, and the cost of flamethrower fuel is almost nothing. It is too small to be worthy for inclusion in any cost calculation.