Accumulators are too cheap

[bobucles]

A "one size fits all solution" that eliminates a large amount of gameplay, like accumulators and solar in combination, is a bad solution.

Accumulators + Solar is the easy solution to an energy problem that has many potential solutions. There is no point using those other options while accumulators exist. Eliminating accumulators means the player loses the easy solution, and has to instead utilize the more difficult choices for their energy. Thus it would INCREASE the amount of gameplay.

Checkmate.

[Lallante]

A "one size fits all solution" that eliminates a large amount of gameplay, like accumulators and solar in combination, is a bad solution.

Accumulators + Solar is the easy solution to an energy problem that has many potential solutions. There is no point using those other options while accumulators exist. Eliminating accumulators means the player loses the easy solution, and has to instead utilize the more difficult choices for their energy. Thus it would INCREASE the amount of gameplay.

Checkmate.

By checkmate do you mean "I completely agree with you"? Because we are saying exactly the same thing

[ShadowTheAge]

IMO accumulatorss should self-discharge quickly (faster then day-night) so you use them to cover energy spikes and use other solutions to power your base (or store power) through dark hours.

[BlakeMW]

The problem with self discharge is it really ruins accus completely for steam. Actually steam/accu is already pretty stupid (because steam engines are cheaper per kW), but self-discharge makes the assumption you are charging the accus with free electricity, if they're being charged with steam the self-discharge results in burning coal for nothing.

Nothing is stopping a player from running steam power to survive the night. The player can still expand his factory or go fighting or anything he wants during that time. The actual amount of fuel required to survive the 0% solar hours is very low, and if a player doesn't have that kind of fuel then they already have a crisis.

To be precise, if you have just enough solar panels to provide your peak usage during daylight, your fuel requirements (and pollution from boilers, and number of boilers required if using tanks to store hot water) is cut to exactly 30% of what it would be, under 1/3rd. If you have more than enough solar it'll be reduced by even more because solar will provide a larger share of power during dawn/dusk. I normally use solar/steam cause it's cheaper, and hot water storage steam power plants are pretty easy to make (offshore pump, fuel and boiler requirements all dramatically reduced)

[bobucles]

IMO accumulatorss should self-discharge quickly (faster then day-night) so you use them to cover energy spikes and use other solutions to power your base (or store power) through dark hours.

Night hours are very short. Like 4-6 hours of pure night.

An accumulator needs to drain completely in about 4-6 hours in order to not last the night. That means your accumulator needs to be recharged 24/(4..6) or in a range of 4-6 times a day. That's a constant waste drain of around 60kW for every single accumulator on the field. For a small sized base of 1000 accumulators you get 60MW of drain, which in my experience at least doubles or triples a base's power usage.

At the very least, 300kW of surge energy is not worth paying a steady 60kW tax. Accumulators would need their maximum charge/discharge rates drastically improved to justify them existing just for laser turret's sake.

[ShadowTheAge]

For a small sized base of 1000 accumulators you get 60MW of drain, which in my experience at least doubles or triples a base's power usage

You won't need that many to cover energy spikes (big alien attacks)

Let me explain my idea a little bit:
Imagine we have no accumulators. Are solar panels still viable? Of course they are! They give energy for free, and that's the gift you cannot decline.

You can do steam(night) + solar(day). You are saving 70% fuel/boiler pollution already! Worth it? Yes.

Can you spend even less (almost up to full solar)? Yes! But your base will be idle 30% of the time. That's easily solvable by building more production (you have the space because you have freed a lot of it by removing accumulators)
That's not acceptable for defences, so we need better energy manipulation than we have now, so you can shutdown some production while leaving defences and something else, automated of course (daylight sensor?). You can use night times to back up conveyor lines, trains are working, essential production is working, steel furnaces are working if you wish to use them.

And you need accumulators to survive big attacks. You need more over time. That even makes laser turrets less of a no-brainer! (One of issues that is discussed in a nearby topic). So, you want easy-to-use laser turrets, but they need accumulators for large attacks, but accumulators are discarging, so you are paying for them with coal/fuel. If you build too much accumulators - you are losing resources, too few - large attacks can cause problems. This way, laser turrets have indirect maintenance and no longer fully obsoletes ammo turrets. They are better for places that are constantly attacked (ammo costs a lot)

So, going green is a logistical challenge (the whole game is about this). In return you have very little coal/fuel consumption. Efficiency modules also helping to achieve this. And this is entirely optional, you can go "easy way" (coal+solar) and still get a lot of net gain.