Solar Cell

Solar Cell
Photovoltaic cell that supplies <hl>50</> power to your grid during daylight, with increased output throughout summer. Lua ID c_solar_cell Size Small Solar Power 50 Affected By Events yes

Recipe

Circuit Board	Crystal Chunk		Solar Cell
2	10

Produced by

Assembler	Time
	16 seconds

Required Technology

Power Transference

Optimal Ratios

v0.1.11618

Solar components generate full power during the day and reduced power at night. Thus they need to be complemented with energy storage such as batteries. We can calculate how much energy we need if we know how much daylight power we need to replace at night and how long the night lasts. Night lasts from 21:30 to 2:20, or 0.2 of the day, and days are 500, 1000, or 1500 seconds respectively depending on whether the day length has been set to Short, Normal, or Long. So the corresponding number of batteries is:

solar_power_generated * 0.8 * 0.2 * day_period / power_storage

Under some conditions (e.g. short days) a battery might be limited by its discharge rate:

solar_power_generated * 0.8 * / drain_rate

day_period	Capacitor	Small Battery	Medium Battery	Large Battery
Short	1	0.26	0.08	0.008
Normal	2	0.26	0.08	0.008
Long	3	0.4	0.12	0.012

Tips

• Other than Blight Power Generators, solar cells and Small Batteries in Building 1x1 (1S) are the most resource-efficient (and least space-efficient) way to generate power
• Solar Cells generate 25 additional solar power during summer