Solar panel problems

[Jebodiah]

hey I'm pretty new to KSP but watched a lot of Scott Manley's uploads and managed to get a satellite into orbit. It has 5 solar panels and 4 batteries which was working fine as I transmitted science back home but after the first I think 1 or 2 transmissions it ran out of power and I figured "ok, the panels need a minute to recharge" but they aren't. Is there a certain place on the craft I need to place them or do they maybe require more time to recharge?

(OX-STAT Photovoltaic Panels)

thanks a lot for anyone who takes time to help me out:)

[bewing]

Welcome to the forums!

Hmmm. A couple of possibilities here -- if you were to post a picture it would narrow things down a bit.

OX-STATs don't move (don't track the sun), so you may have to rotate your ship a bit. If you want to get maximum charging, you definitely need to rotate your ship to get the panels facing the sun as directly as you can.

OX-STATs only provide a trickle of power (like .35 zaps per second, each), and science transmissions use a lot (like 350 zaps). So it can easily take 1000 seconds to recharge what you use.

Sometimes, OX-STATs seem to think they've been mounted a little below the skin of the rocket, and refuse to produce any electricity at all. If this happens to you, you may have to rotate your ship to find the panels that actually work.

Is Kerbin blocking the Sun? It will do that for half of every orbit. You can also get short eclipses where the Mun is blocking the Sun. Eclipses can be very confusing -- it looks like you craft is in sunlight, but you get no power out of your panels.

 

Edited January 15, 2017 by bewing

[diomedea]

You certainly mean "the batteries are taking time to recharge". Panels provide EC for the batteries to store, but they don't when in shadow or not oriented towards Sun (so, best if they are mounted on the vessel in a position where they have no other parts obstructing light from Sun).

[Jebodiah]

    

I have the batteries and the panels which seem like they're on the surface as well as when I press B on them (Xbox one) they say they're taking in electricity.

[Jebodiah]

Also how do you post pictures? Like I said, really new at this...

[diomedea]

2 hours ago, Jebodiah said:

Also how do you post pictures? Like I said, really new at this...

Single pictures are easy, first upload yours on a online site (most used here imgur, but other work as well) then the site should provide the link to that pic, which you need to copy and paste in your post.

[Jebodiah]

https://imgur.com/a/fEq5c

there's probably so many things wrong with this considering I'm pretty new XD 

[bewing]

Yeah, each of those batteries only holds 100 zaps. So your total EC storage is probably 410 zaps. Which is only enough for a couple science transmissions, and then you need to let it recharge for awhile. In the top right of your screen should be a "resource meter". If you hover over it, you should be able to watch the electricity recharge slowly. You will probably only be able to get credit for transmitting each experiment once -- so be prepared for that.

 

[Jebodiah]

Alright, thanks for all the feedback btw! But I was also wondering if the Mobile Processing Lab      MPL-LG-2 has unlimited uses? As in like you can transmit, wait a while and just keep doing that indefinitely as long as it has power.

[bewing]

44 minutes ago, Jebodiah said:

Alright, thanks for all the feedback btw! But I was also wondering if the Mobile Processing Lab      MPL-LG-2 has unlimited uses? As in like you can transmit, wait a while and just keep doing that indefinitely as long as it has power.

You put experiments into the MPL, and you can only put each experiment in once. After you put it in, you "process" the experiment into data and the experiment gets used up. Once the experiment has been processed into data, then you do "research" on the data to convert it into science points, and the data gets used up (slowly). Then you transmit the science, so the science gets used up. So no, it's not unlimited. But depending on how many experiments you put in, it can take a very long time to use all of it all up.

 

[Jebodiah]

1 hour ago, bewing said:

You put experiments into the MPL, and you can only put each experiment in once. After you put it in, you "process" the experiment into data and the experiment gets used up. Once the experiment has been processed into data, then you do "research" on the data to convert it into science points, and the data gets used up (slowly). Then you transmit the science, so the science gets used up. So no, it's not unlimited. But depending on how many experiments you put in, it can take a very long time to use all of it all up.

 

Alright thanks, would you happen to know if there is any form of way to produce indefinite transmitable science?

Edited January 16, 2017 by Jebodiah

[bewing]

Each MPL can only process each experiment into transmittable science once, and there are only a finite number of experiments in the Kerbol system -- but you can build and launch an infinite number of MPLs, and fill each of them with experiments, and therefore transmit an infinite amount of science that way.

[Jebodiah]

Oh ok so one single cell won't give infinite science but you can just put out a metric f**kton of them

[Chakat Firepaw]

11 hours ago, Jebodiah said:

https://imgur.com/a/fEq5c

there's probably so many things wrong with this considering I'm pretty new XD 

It's not horrid, the one big change I would make is to angle the OX-STATs at each end a bit so that you can get a little power even when pointing directly at or away from the sun.

[sardia]

If you don't want to take pictures with your phone, press "print screen" button. Then open up paint, and hit paste or ctrl + v. Then you can save + upload that to imgur.

6 minutes ago, Chakat Firepaw said:

It's not horrid, the one big change I would make is to angle the OX-STATs at each end a bit so that you can get a little power even when pointing directly at or away from the sun.

 

[Magzimum]

Judging by the picture you linked to (thanks), the batteries should be recharging. If they are not, perhaps your data was not fully transmitted yet? It could be that the data transmission was stopped due to lack of charge, and will keep on consuming all available electric charge until it is fully transmitted. This can take hours or days, depending on the amount of data (which depends on the type of experiment). You can check this by warping forward. If you warp forward several days, at some point the batteries really should start recharging.
 

It may be possible to take screenshots too on Xbox, but I don't know how. On PC, it's done by pressing F1 (and then retrieving the picture from the 'screenshots' folder in the KSP folder). On Linux computers you may in addition also press the "print screen" button which opens a window that asks you what to name this screenshot file, and where to save it. However, it's worth investigating a little - first to be able to post better pictures to ask better questions - and later to show off your amazing spaceships!

 

[Jebodiah]

13 hours ago, Chakat Firepaw said:

It's not horrid, the one big change I would make is to angle the OX-STATs at each end a bit so that you can get a little power even when pointing directly at or away from the sun.

Thanks for the advice