What's eating my power?

[Mitchz95]

My Tylo lander just reached Jool, but something's eating its electric charge at a rate of 0.03 per second. I tried turning off all systems on the ship, but it won't stop even when I'm angled toward the sun.

I know those panels don't provide much power that far out, but I can't see why my power is going down even when I'm not doing anything. I've turned literally everything off.

[FancyMouse]

Check the description of probe core

[Streetwind]

Apart from probe cores, science parts can also eat electricity, even though this is not indicated anywhere in the game. For example, turning a thermometer on to display its temperature in the rightclick menu will cause it to consume a small amount of Ec. The same goes for other, similar parts.

[Plusck]

 

3 hours ago, Mitchz95 said:

My Tylo lander just reached Jool, but something's eating its electric charge at a rate of 0.03 per second. I tried turning off all systems on the ship, but it won't stop even when I'm angled toward the sun.

I know those panels don't provide much power that far out, but I can't see why my power is going down even when I'm not doing anything. I've turned literally everything off.

As FancyMouse said, check the description of probe core.

It looks like you are using the smaller Remote Guidance Unit. It consumes 3 electricity per minute. That is 0.05 electricity per second.

Each single OX-STAT - if directly facing the sun - will produce about one twenty-fifth of its nominal power out at Jool. That means about 0.015 electricity per second.

Since you can only ever keep a single panel facing directly sunwards, you will necessarily be losing 0.035 electricity per second. No other way about it.

The only way to save that ship is to shut off one battery, transfer the maximum possible charge to it, and only re-enable it just before firing your engines (which will produce more than enough electricity to power all your systems).

[Mitchz95]

I guess I should have chosen my parts more carefully. Still, I think I can get it to Tylo safely. The incoming Kerbals should have an RTG to spare.

Thanks for the help!

[Nich]

Don't forget kerbals need electricity when they get there as it looks like you have tac

[NathanKell]

Little known fact: the little sensors (acceleration, gravity, pressure, temperature) consume EC when they are set to display data.