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Finally someone saw the light and accepted the superiority of Factorio's flat solar panel design. Why dump so many resources into fixtures to eke out every last

Finally someone saw the light and accepted the superiority of Factorio's flat solar panel design. Why dump so many resources into fixtures to eke out every last drop of efficiency when panels are cheap enough to just spam as groundcover? :)

elihu 4y ago
Actually, the game art uses tilted panels (crammed closer together than they'd be in real life, so the shadow of one falls on the one behind it), though I admit I did think of Factorio solar panels in the sense that in the game you can make an area inaccessible to pedestrians by spamming the ground with them. https://wiki.factorio.com/Solar_panel https://wiki.factorio.com/Solar_panel
- infogulch 4y ago
  Time to open a bug report :S
  - TOGoS 4y ago
    Harkonnen had a long-term project to make dynamic shadows that would change throughout the day, which would result in the solar panels being fully lit for at least a moment at noonish, but I got the impression that side-project was eventually canned due to, uhm, personnel issues.
    - aardvarkr 4y ago
      Did something dramatic happen?
      - rootw0rm 4y ago
        Yes, Paul of house Atreides happened
    - infogulch 4y ago
      Aren't shadows baked into the texture? Adding another dimension to the texture matrix of all structures seems dubious.
jacquesm 4y ago
This has been exactly my strategy. My first setup had two leafs of 8 panels each, tracking both azimuth and elevation. It was fragile, finicky, required a lot of active components and ultimately cost more per Watt that it put out than if I had simply laid the panels flat. Which is exactly what I did with my current installation (16x265 and 26x365). Another advantage of panels that are flat is that they are much less prone to being lifted up by the wind, you can mount them flush and the wind barely has any grip on them. They also do not shade each other at all, no matter what the angle of the sun. Double axis tracking systems when they work are very pretty and technically satisfying, but ultimately those are not the right criteria by which to evaluate a system that has to be reliable, storm proof and that has to last a decade or more after installation, preferably without any service. The weak point in the current installation is the cables and the connectors, that is something you can't really get away from. After dismantling a few older setups and having a good look at what remains there are two things that stand out for me: Make sure all cable joints are made in the shadow of a panel and tie down your cables on the underside of the support structure so they don't flap about in the wind and are not exposed to direct sunlight. Over time they'll get killed and especially with series connected panels (the bulk of them) this can lead to spectacular results (of the wrong kind).
- killjoywashere 4y ago
  Covered parking and rooftop make so much more sense though. Why do we want to cover more of the natural world, our only world, with more of our silicate-derived trash? Parking and rooftop ensure the structural protection of your cabling, while at the same time optimizing the positioning of your servicing ports. Slightly elevated rooftop solar can also significantly reduce the a/c bill of a structure (especially smaller houses in sunny environments) and parking helps protect the paint of cars.
  - calvinmorrison 4y ago
    Because the usa is huge and full of low value arid desert near areas that need lots of power. In short, economics of the sun God
smadge 4y ago
Aren’t the factorio solar panels propped up on little steel struts?
otabdeveloper4 4y ago
Seems like an unmitigated environmental disaster.
pjio 4y ago
s/Factorio/Rimworld/ tilted: https://wiki.factorio.com/images/Solar_panel_entity.png https://wiki.factorio.com/images/Solar_panel_entity.png flat: https://rimworldwiki.com/images/b/b4/Solar_generator.png https://rimworldwiki.com/images/b/b4/Solar_generator.png
JoeAltmaier 4y ago
From one point of view, they are exactly as efficient as tilted panels? If your metric is sunlight intercepted per acre, then 100% is as good as it gets. Tilting gets a better angle of incidence with the sun, which matters if that improves conversion rate (does it?). If you have plenty of land and cheap panels, then your metric might be dollars-per-watt. Then this solution is a big step up. Less cost per install means more money for acres. You end up with more acres installed, you have more electricity. And I suspect this is the right metric for some areas (like Texas), since panels are cheaper every year and they have plenty of acres.
- vagrantJin 4y ago
  > Less cost per install means more money for acres. Less cost smells like cutting corners in this case. Kinda of like saying concrete and rebar are expensive and you could build a bigger house without them. Is that true though? Flat panels may be good enough but slapping such a high tech piece of equipment on the groud sounds suspiciously too good to be true. I suspect the cost per panel to be insanely high if not upfront then in maintenance.
  - JoeAltmaier 4y ago
    Cheap, cheap hi-tech. That's the trend and it is inevitable it will change the sweet spot for installation techniques.
    - vagrantJin 4y ago
      Do you really believe that though? Slapping high tech panels on the ground seems peculiar.

elihu 4y ago

Actually, the game art uses tilted panels (crammed closer together than they'd be in real life, so the shadow of one falls on the one behind it), though I admit I did think of Factorio solar panels in the sense that in the game you can make an area inaccessible to pedestrians by spamming the ground with them. https://wiki.factorio.com/Solar_panel https://wiki.factorio.com/Solar_panel

infogulch 4y ago
Time to open a bug report :S
- TOGoS 4y ago
  Harkonnen had a long-term project to make dynamic shadows that would change throughout the day, which would result in the solar panels being fully lit for at least a moment at noonish, but I got the impression that side-project was eventually canned due to, uhm, personnel issues.
  - aardvarkr 4y ago
    Did something dramatic happen?
    - rootw0rm 4y ago
      Yes, Paul of house Atreides happened
  - infogulch 4y ago
    Aren't shadows baked into the texture? Adding another dimension to the texture matrix of all structures seems dubious.

jacquesm 4y ago

This has been exactly my strategy. My first setup had two leafs of 8 panels each, tracking both azimuth and elevation. It was fragile, finicky, required a lot of active components and ultimately cost more per Watt that it put out than if I had simply laid the panels flat. Which is exactly what I did with my current installation (16x265 and 26x365). Another advantage of panels that are flat is that they are much less prone to being lifted up by the wind, you can mount them flush and the wind barely has any grip on them. They also do not shade each other at all, no matter what the angle of the sun. Double axis tracking systems when they work are very pretty and technically satisfying, but ultimately those are not the right criteria by which to evaluate a system that has to be reliable, storm proof and that has to last a decade or more after installation, preferably without any service. The weak point in the current installation is the cables and the connectors, that is something you can't really get away from. After dismantling a few older setups and having a good look at what remains there are two things that stand out for me: Make sure all cable joints are made in the shadow of a panel and tie down your cables on the underside of the support structure so they don't flap about in the wind and are not exposed to direct sunlight. Over time they'll get killed and especially with series connected panels (the bulk of them) this can lead to spectacular results (of the wrong kind).

killjoywashere 4y ago
Covered parking and rooftop make so much more sense though. Why do we want to cover more of the natural world, our only world, with more of our silicate-derived trash? Parking and rooftop ensure the structural protection of your cabling, while at the same time optimizing the positioning of your servicing ports. Slightly elevated rooftop solar can also significantly reduce the a/c bill of a structure (especially smaller houses in sunny environments) and parking helps protect the paint of cars.
- calvinmorrison 4y ago
  Because the usa is huge and full of low value arid desert near areas that need lots of power. In short, economics of the sun God

smadge 4y ago

Aren’t the factorio solar panels propped up on little steel struts?

otabdeveloper4 4y ago

Seems like an unmitigated environmental disaster.

pjio 4y ago

s/Factorio/Rimworld/ tilted: https://wiki.factorio.com/images/Solar_panel_entity.png https://wiki.factorio.com/images/Solar_panel_entity.png flat: https://rimworldwiki.com/images/b/b4/Solar_generator.png https://rimworldwiki.com/images/b/b4/Solar_generator.png

JoeAltmaier 4y ago

From one point of view, they are exactly as efficient as tilted panels? If your metric is sunlight intercepted per acre, then 100% is as good as it gets. Tilting gets a better angle of incidence with the sun, which matters if that improves conversion rate (does it?). If you have plenty of land and cheap panels, then your metric might be dollars-per-watt. Then this solution is a big step up. Less cost per install means more money for acres. You end up with more acres installed, you have more electricity. And I suspect this is the right metric for some areas (like Texas), since panels are cheaper every year and they have plenty of acres.

vagrantJin 4y ago
> Less cost per install means more money for acres. Less cost smells like cutting corners in this case. Kinda of like saying concrete and rebar are expensive and you could build a bigger house without them. Is that true though? Flat panels may be good enough but slapping such a high tech piece of equipment on the groud sounds suspiciously too good to be true. I suspect the cost per panel to be insanely high if not upfront then in maintenance.
- JoeAltmaier 4y ago
  Cheap, cheap hi-tech. That's the trend and it is inevitable it will change the sweet spot for installation techniques.
  - vagrantJin 4y ago
    Do you really believe that though? Slapping high tech panels on the ground seems peculiar.