Davidian1024 Posted May 12, 2023 Share Posted May 12, 2023 (edited) Maybe this is just because heating hasn't been released yet, and this will go away once it is. But today I'm noticing that getting even somewhat close to Kerbol causes my solar panels to generate huge amounts of EC. I was pretty close, maybe half way between Moho and Kerbol, and my Colossus panels were generating well over 4000 EC/s (their stats in the VAB say 35/s). I decided to try with the OX-STAT-XL panels next because I think they have the highest amount of EC/s generated by mass when compared to the other panels. I'm about 102MM above Kerbol and each one is producing almost 1700 EC/s (their stats in the VAB say 1.25 EC/s). Some pretty impressive gains there. This means I can power a huge number of Dawn engines with a tiny amount of solar panel mass. Part of me doesn't want this fixed. I guess my more rational side won. Edited June 1, 2023 by Anth12 Added image Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtomicTech Posted May 12, 2023 Share Posted May 12, 2023 Battery go boom? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lyneira Posted May 15, 2023 Share Posted May 15, 2023 (edited) This is probably due to the inverse square law used for solar radiation. Each time you halve the distance, you get 4 times the radiation. From the numbers you gave, it should work out that you're at about 1/37th (2.73%) the distance to Kerbol that Kerbin is. Even if that's correct though, real life solar panels don't work this way because they don't work as well (or can even be damaged) when they overheat. To keep solar panels from degrading or overheating, they're sometimes angled so they receive less radiation, like BepiColombo. I don't think that solar panel overheating or degradation necessarily has to be a thing in the game, but it could be abstracted as a soft or hard cap on EC generation from solar panels. When heating is implemented, the panel efficiency could be reduced by high temperatures to act as a soft cap. This could also be an incentive to provide active cooling for solar panels by radiators to raise the soft cap and tap into the huge EC potential from being close to Kerbol. Edited May 15, 2023 by Lyneira Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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