you could easily make a connector for a series of cells (panel) on that panel itself then use a wire of some sort (wouldn't make a difference if its in shade) so you could place it anywhere (if it's practical that depends of course). take my example from above, you don't have to physically make contact for cells to put in series, AFAIK you'd put multiple cells in series, and then put those parallel. if one of the circuits in series is in shade the other will still generate power. (you could even make it redundant in case if one of the panels would fail over time) There you are wrong, it is not unpredictable you can in fact perfectly calculate it. My point is that the game tells you there's ZERO sun exposure, when in fact you can see with your own eyes, that at least a part is exposed. The whole: "will it generate power" is indeed a question to how it's build (if they even thought about that, there is some kind of calculation based on the exposure, as it gives you, sun exposure, energy flow and status). In my case, ALL panels were 0 exposure, all were blocked by a decoupler, which is in line, so this is very unlikely scenario imho. btw: I know how solar cells work to the photon-electron level, I get your point, but its not the issue here EDIT: If a Cell is in shade, the module will likely not produce electricity, if at least one of the modules in the array is fully lit, the solar array will produce some amount of electricity. (thats what im trying to tell )