Estimating power production and consumption - radx5Blue/ImmersiveSolarArrays GitHub Wiki

Power consumption under solar power differs very slightly from vanilla for the sake of added realism.

Power consumption of appliances is as follows:

Stoves or fridge/freezer combos : 119.6 Ah

Popsicle fridge: 147.2 Ah

Television: 15.64 Ah

Radio: 4.6 Ah

Lamp: 1.84 Ah

Solar panels generate power according to a formula that can be simplified as number of panels x 83, the efficiency percentage is then applied to this value, and finally things like temperature, cloudiness and amount of light are applied to get the final value. Bad cloud conditions can reduce output by 25%, and temperature can have either a positive effect (colder) or a negative effect (warmer) of a few %. Solar panels don't produce any power at night, obviously.

A system should ideally have enough solar input that it can power all the running appliances AND charge the batteries completely during daylight hours, this means you need twice as much power production as your appliances drain.

If you have, for example, a popsicle fridge and a normal fridge, and two lamps, that already amounts to 270.48 Ah. That means that you need same Ah amount of batteries for each hour of darkness. Let's say you have a 12 hour night, that means you need a total battery capacity of 3245.76 Ah!

Remember: the failsafe is your friend! Using a gas-powered generator to supplement your solar setup is a must if you're running several power-intensive appliances.