Solar floor

[Dergonic]

Hi

This is now a few years that (IRL), searchers and industrials are trying to make solaar floor.
(Here is an old article of what I'm talking about : https://newatlas.com/solar-powered-sidewalk/29351/)

Would it be interesting creating a solaar floor system in Factorio ?
Of course, this entity should produce energy, it could also act as a short range power pole (to connect a panel to the adjacent one).
To stay realistic, It would be interesting to design it as "Non buildable" zone.

Regards, Dergonic

[mrvn]

There already is Musk floor, solar cells you can walk on, in Angels+Bobs mods.

[zOldBulldog]

+1

It would be great for rail blueprints, to use the space between the rails without interfering with movement. It could also give a speed-up like concrete.

Also, it is extremely realistic. The Chinese are currently building a highway like this (IRL).

[4xel]

And make them 30 times less effective that their regular counterpart, just like in real world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obS6TUVSZds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H901KdXgHs4

And make them deteriorate when you walk on them, and destroy when you try to drive on it, like glass would do.

Oh and not produce power when you are standing on them.

(do note that the idea was supposed to be production ready 4 years ago, when the videos linked were made, solar roadways are yet to be seen. And no, China watt ways do not count ; the idea is slightly less utterly stupid than solar roadway, but they had to close their road after a few week. Why? Because tempered glass is not asphalt. Even assuming cheap magic glass, static horizontal lying on the ground is the worse possible place to put solar panels as far as sun exposure goes, you lose 2/3 of the exposure by just not tracking the sun, and a bit more in urban environnement by just the shadow of buildings, by putting panels on the ground rather than on a roof, not even counting occlusion from vehicles and pedestrians. Then therhe installation cost where you lose most of the remaining factor of 10 compared to regular panels).


I mean, I am all for magicolulz stuffs in video games, like burnable nuclear rocket fuel, but please don't invoke realism to defend this idea. Except if you really want to see it implemented to be 30 times worse than current solar panels.

[zOldBulldog]

Not talking of vaporware like that, nor using the same solar materials that you use for regular panels.

I'm talking of real technology already deployed today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlsCWVw8d7w

It is nothing fancy, but clearly functional.

Anyway, back to Factorio... in the world of Factorio being able to pave walkable areas like the space between rails or under your bus... solar flooring makes a lot of sense.

[4xel]

I'm talking of real technology already deployed today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlsCWVw8d7w

I thought this real technology was closed five days after opening (https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society ... design-not , I've looked up for when it has been reopened but haven't found anything, I'm eager to know whether, when and for how long it reopened, you can PM me if you don't want me to derail this thread further).

You can hand wave a lot of things with magic materials, but you can't handwave poorer sun exposure than tilted panels, let alone sun tracking ones. You cannot handwave geometry away. This is independant of material ; I can take any magic panels you have in mind, orient them (and incidentally be unable to walk on them) and have a better yield (and we still have a lot of unused space on our roofs).


As far as factorio goes, solar paveways could be cool, solar rooftops would be cooler (more area to place them in a typical dense factory location, not unlike IRL with typical dense urban area). So let's do both, have a solar paveway that is buildable, and solar paveways below building representing rooftop panels (graphism can come later).

As far as their economics go, make them twice more ressource intensive (per energy produced) than regular solar panels, if anything, for gameplay experience : you don't want old solar panels to become completely useless, so solar rooftops/paveways should offer an expensive and space efficient alternative to regular solar panels, which seem to represent dedicated solar farms using tracking panels. They may be as or more energy dense though, both for a gameplay and from a realistic perspective.

I've chosen the number 2 purely for gameplay purposes, it can be anything that offers meaningful choice to the player. It happens to be realistic of static tilted rooftop solar panels vs sun tracking ones, but the absence of energy loss over long transmission distances makes it heavily biased toward dedicated solar stations as we have now (and rooftop performances makes paveways unrealistically appalling, even discarding fast deterioration and higher installation cost). In any case the precise balancing of the item should be motivated by gameplay (just like its very existence).