Solar panels (overall efficiency)

  • Hi guys


    I have been playing IC2 now for a while and also reading this forum for almost as long.


    I sometimes notice that a lot of people think the average production of a solar panel, when you include night times is 0.5EU/t. Assuming ( I guess) that day and night is of equal length.


    This has clashed with the number given in the wiki for solar panels for quite some time. 13050EU/day (13056 in my test), if you do the maths that breaks down to 13050/20= 652.5seconds, and then 652.5/60= 10.875 minutes, or 10 minutes and 52.5 seconds.


    This is slightly longer than the 10min for half a day and therefore increasing the efficiency slightly to 13050/24000 (ticks they generate power/ticks in a full day)=0.54375


    I know .04 isn't much of an efficiency gain from what is said, but I thought it worth looking into. This changes the setup for systems where people want to run say 32EU/t for the full day, you don't quite need 64 (59 I think) solar panels for the power to continue throughout the night (providing you have enough EU storage).

    Hell, prove me wrong, Happy to be so 99% of the time, then I can learn stuff :)

  • Night and day actually aren't equal length. Including dusk and dawn, day is 13 minutes long. Light levels remain sufficient to power solars for some fraction of that 3 minutes.

  • Night and day actually aren't equal length. Including dusk and dawn, day is 13 minutes long. Light levels remain sufficient to power solars for some fraction of that 3 minutes.


    That's interesting, and good to know. Thanks you for that info. :)