Talk:Solar panel
Common ratios
I added the common rule-of-thumb 25 solar panels to 21 accumulators for 1 MW. I guess on Vulcanus there are analogous ratios, for example 29/40 or 11/15 or 3/4 for 0.7257600. But I have not checked if the numbers are right Qwr (talk) 05:26, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
Ratios seem incorrect
Nauvis focused:
The solar panel effectively gives 70% of its throughput due to the day/night cycle. It linearly increases and decreases during dawn and dusk, and is at full 100% during the day. This all checks out with the 42kW average number. What doesn't check out is the ratio of ~0.85 accumulator per solar panel. Basic math says it should actually be 1.0584 accumulators per solar panel to maintain a continuous 42kW. Our goal is to buffer the excess 18kW produced during the day for use later. We effectively have 84 + 210 seconds of uptime at 60 kW, creating 17.64 MJ total. We want to buffer 30% of this, which is 5.292 MJ. Can someone explain to me what I'm missing here, because if our goal is to buffer over 5 MJ how can the ratio be less than 1 accumulator per panel? It seems the correct ratio would be 1:1.0584
I'm just trying to figure out if I'm crazy because seemingly a lot of people agree on the stated number here which doesn't pass a basic math check. I tried doing the calculation multiple different ways from different starting points and it always circled back to the same number
--GregFirehawk (talk) (Signature added after the fact)
@GregFirehawk I think you're getting a larger number because the solar panel production doesn't instantly drop to zero. I don't know how to justify it symbolically, but numerical integration (of , with 4.2 second intervals) generates this graph. The peak is at ~4233 kJ, very close to the 25:21 ratio.
(Also, please remember to sign your additions, using --~~~~ or the button after bold and italic.)
--Dalestan (talk) 14:24, 27 May 2026 (UTC)
I went and made my own graph and it makes sense now. Basically I only did a partial conversion from kW to net kW. I handled the integration based on the kW graph, but if you do the integration from the net kW graph it lines up. Should really convert things BEFORE integrating. Having everything in terms of gross instead of net kW is a little unintuitive so here
I also rederived the ratio while I was doing this and got 0.8492530120481928 accumulators / panel, which is slightly different than whats currently listed. Anyway this cleared it up for me, hopefully the additional line on the graph makes it a little more intuitive/obvious for the next person. Thank you @Dalestan for replying, even though your explanation wasn't the best it did point me in the correct direction and that is plenty :)
-- GregFirehawk (talk) 19:55, 27 May 2026 (UTC)