Are solar panels useless?

[Ash//Fox]

I spent a lot of time and effort on tunneling directly up to hit the surface ASAP, with the hopes of installing a solar panel to increase energy production (going for truly renewable achieve), tons of copper on laying power cable up that high and then once I had it set up it only really functioned for at most 2 days before it just got smashed with asteroids and overheated due to extreme temperatures of said asteroids, with several more impacts afterwards. Currently I've just sealed the airlock and taken the thing off the repair list but seems like overall a pretty useless idea if this all it was for. Am I supposed to set up something to protect the solar panels?

[madcow]

Yes. And cooling. And you have to deal with the regolith that builds up and entombs them. Do a search, there are tons of designs.

John Francis has a pretty good system for cooling and dealing with regolith.

Pretty much the rule of thumb is to avoid getting to the surface until you have enough steel to set up bunkers.

[madcow]

Also, if you really want solar power, you can set it up indoors with shine bugs providing illumination. Brothgar has a vid doing that on the youtubes.

[GMC]

Originally posted by Ash//Fox:

Am I supposed to set up something to protect the solar panels?

Yes. That's exactly what bunker doors are for. And the Space Sensor (automation tab) is used to detect incoming meteors and close the doors (via a NOT gate; the sensor outputs green when meteors are detected, the doors open on green and close on red). You also need a row of mesh tiles above the solar panels to catch the hot regolith which falls down when the doors open, and autominers to clear away the regolith (otherwise it will block the sunlight and you won't get any power). Autominers should be made from steel because they can't dissipate heat up there in space and so will eventually overheat; the higher the overheat temperature, the less frequently you need to replace them (autorepair doesn't help because they'll still be hot and continue to take damage; deconstructing and rebuilding resets the temperature).

On the subject of things overheating in a vacuum: it also applies to transformers. Either put them below the abyssalite seam in a biome with atmosphere, or build a room on the surface, back it with drywall, pump in some atmosphere and add a couple of wheezeworts or a cooling loop (you won't need much cooling, but you'll need some).

[The Tempted Man]

Solar panels and shine bugs do the same thing without regolith.

[Just a dog]

Solar panels are amazing but they require A LOT of setup.
If you want an early game method of using solar panels consider shine bugs:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1828623303

Rails can make it so they occupy exactly one tile, but I felt like doing it max ghetto.

Here's solar panels in space for reference (that was taken before I added the cooling system so a wip screenie)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1753484138

For the shine bugs I iterated on a Brothgar design and for the robominers a grindthisgame (youtubers).