Project Virtual Solar Panels can they generate Virtual Electricity?

[HiPotOk1978]

I have seen several examples of how solar panels can be animated to track the sun, and I have even seen the Prelude II bases reset themselves after the sun sets... The question I have to expand on this, can the solar panels know how much sunlight is actually hitting them so a formula can be created to determine how much power they are putting out?

 

[Woo482]

I think they can yes because a Progress addon has Electrical systems that need the solar panels to face the sun

 

[MajorTom]

Sure, why not? This is the thought process I'd use:

As woo just said, it's possible to make your panels "follow" the sun such that the incoming rays are close to "normal." So first figure out how to do that, perhaps borrow someone's code.

If the rays are normal (coming in completely perpendicular to your array) you'll get something like 1000 W per square meter of sunlight (probably more in outer space), times the efficiency of the array (say 20%, possibly higher for newer advanced arrays). Use trig to calculate the fraction of the rays reaching the panel in cases where they're not normal, but coming in at an angle. Use the cosine of the angle. For example, rays coming in at 45 degrees to normal, you'd get ~0.7 times your "normal" amount.

So, let's say you have 4 square meters of array, and the best you can do is to get them to 30 degrees off normal to the incoming light. Assume spacecraft shadows are not a factor. Then you'd have 4 m^2 x 1000 W/m^2 x cos(30) x 20% efficiency = 692.8 watts of electricity.

 

[Linguofreak]

Wait a minute! You have to scale that with the square of distance.

The "solar constant" is 1366 W/m^2 at 1 AU. At 0.5 AU from the Sun it will be 4 times that, at 2 AU it will be a quarter of that.

The big problem is that orbiter doesn't keep track of the luminosity of the central star in a system: Code written for a spacecraft operating in the solar system will give incorrect results if the spacecraft is used in a system with a brighter or dimmer central star.