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.
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