Solar Panels

1st Official Post

    Solar panels do not produce energy when it is night or when it rains.
    If you mean this when you say "stop working" then yes, this is normal.


    They should produce energy during the day when it is not raining, if they are not I suggest trying another energy source at the same place instead to see if energy is transmitted to rule out other issues not specific to solar panels.
    Also, if you intend to use solar panels much (or in larger numbers) I advise to use compact solar panels: [IC2 1.106] [UNIVERSAL] CompactSolars 3.0 now available. CompactSolars is now opensource!


    If solar panels still give you issues, please describe the condition (version of minecraft, forge, ic2 and possibly other add-ons) and how you use them in your world (single player or multiplayer, setup of ic2 stuff).

    For all I know right now is they just stop working so when I go to them they are not working in full sun. I will look into to other things to see if I can figure them out. thanks


    They do work when I install them and they do eventually start back up again.

    What I generally noticed was that with 1.3.2 (not sure if it was the change from 1.2.5 to 1.3.2 or something else) is that if you are running a server but logged out and noone is there that all the machines stop working and do nothing.
    So you need to be in the geeral area for them to do something. They will not while you are offline, and thus not charge up some energy storage when you are not there.


    Maybe that's it.



    That's an interesting question I have to others: Why and since when does the world "stop" while nobody is there? Is there a way to change that?

    Sometimes they do seem to be just starting up again when I get to them. I use 1.3.2. How close do you have to stay to them so they keep going? I don't have this one on a server. If they don't stay running what good are they?

    To keep the chunks loaded you have to stay close to them. Don't know the exact numbers but something around 80 to 100 meters.


    Best idea is to use the World Anchors from railcraft to keep your factorys / solar loaded, even if you are offline (the server has to running all the time).

    Do you have to add all of Railcraft to use it? "The World Anchor works to keep an area of 3x3 chunks". How many blocks is a chunk?

    May other problem still exists. All the solar panels stop. I use 1.3.2 with 4.2.5.312 forge - Optifine B4 - MultiMC - Rei's MiniMap. I have weather turned of in Optifine and wonder if that might be it that the solar panels can still detect the rain.