Solar Panel energy production is much worse then real-world production

[pwalsh0]

Describe the bug

The normal solar panels in-game produce 50W: https://cdda-guide.nornagon.net/vehicle_part/solar_panel

This is absolutely pathetic compared to a normal 1m2 consumer panel that many of us use today. It's quite common these days for people to have 5kW solar setups, or even larger. To get 5kw in-game would require 100 of these panels, and covering the entire roof (after looting an entire city worth of panels).

A more realistic value for this size of panel should be a value from 250W-500W.

Advanced panels should be adjusted in similar fashion.

Attach save file

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Steps to reproduce

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Expected behavior

Solar panels in game should produce similar output to average real photovoltaic panel of similar size.

Screenshots

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Versions and configuration

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Additional context

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[pwalsh0]

A realistic figure for 1m2 of avg PV panel today is 150W actually. I assume the ones in-game are bit larger than 1m2.

To produce 50W we would be talking about 0.3m2 - what is this, a solar panel for ants?

[RenechCDDA]

Some related conversations here: #67508

[oosyrag]

Tldr Solar panel tiles are currently sized for vehicles, which means they are not one square meter worth of panel per tile

[Standing-Storm]

Tldr Solar panel tiles are currently sized for vehicles, which means they are not one square meter worth of panel per tile

One possible solution for this might be editing the Construction solar panel recipes so that the resulting appliance provide a higher power level but takes more than one "panel" to place while leaving vehicle panels with the same 50w/1 panel requirement. That way building solar panels take up a realistic amount of space on the roof.

(You'd have to get more solar panels from deconstructing solar panels found on other roofs for this all to work out as well)

[oosyrag]

Alternatively, normalize the current solar panels to be 1m², and make a new smaller rv solar panel item for vehicles, since solar panels on premade vehicles is going away and was never a good idea to begin with.

This would be a considerably more disruptive change though, which makes the above solution probably better.

Following that train of thought though, the current solar panel could be renamed to be the smaller vehicles/rv solar panel, and a new item/construction for the standard size (half size?) single tile rooftop item could be added (a standard solar panel is roughly 1x2 meters, so two tiles).

A standard size solar panel is 300-400W, or 150-200W per half/tile. That would be of 3-4 of our current solar panels per tile. I like the idea of 4 panels per tile, but also think 400W is a bit high. I'd adjust current panels down to 40W, 4 of which make up one full tile size solar panel tile at 160W, two of which togethers adds up to 360W for a standard 1x2m rooftop panel over two tiles.

[pwalsh0]

I like the idea of making the "roof" panels require 3+ of these vehicle panels to construct.