Energy management

[swillo]

I was just thinking about when energy stops being free and we have to use fuel and wind to power things.

It would be nice to have some low watt solar panels for when the sun is out. They don't work at night but combined with wind they should be able to charge batteries during the day.
That would round out the top 3 sources for power.

Also it would be nice if we could have a breaker box that we can pull up to manage what is turned on and what is off. It will be tough to run around and manually turn off lights and remember to turn them back on later.
A simple popup window with a list of all the things using power and an on/off toggle switch for them would be perfect.

[Aereto]

I was just thinking about when energy stops being free and we have to use fuel and wind to power things.

It would be nice to have some low watt solar panels for when the sun is out. They don't work at night but combined with wind they should be able to charge batteries during the day.
That would round out the top 3 sources for power.

Also it would be nice if we could have a breaker box that we can pull up to manage what is turned on and what is off. It will be tough to run around and manually turn off lights and remember to turn them back on later.
A simple popup window with a list of all the things using power and an on/off toggle switch for them would be perfect.

As far as tech is concerned, solar energy would be a more logical and likely a Lv 5 renewable power tech in the world of Kenshi, and provide partial explanation as to how those towns are powered (other being distribution and trade to supply fuel for the generators. Solar efficiency upgrades come at Lv 6+.

Powering the generators would be like other machinery, using particular materials (coal, liquid combustibles, etc.) to be consumed to produce a set amount of energy units per measure of time, which is where batteries will start to have their usefulness.

[philthymcnasty]

the thing about solar cells, is that the level 5 gate already has them.

like on top of the gate, there are like 2 solar panels.

[Chinsei]

well Solar panels atleast in the real world require /alot/ of maintenence. which is one of the reasons that they don't build Solar Power plants much. (that an they are apparently expensive to build).

but being able to pick which items take up power when there isn't enough power available would be nice.

perhaps later on we could also build power lines to other towns an trade electricity for a steady stream of income from towns that don't have power or are under powered.

especially if AI cities are even given the ability to gradually grow bigger.

[bk3000]

Yeah I'd like to see solar. The downside besides being day only is that it would probably take a lot of room relative to the amount of power it produces, and possibly materials too. I imagine that it is planned already.

I'm assuming that energy stops being free sometime after the new map happens. I'm assuming you probably only have oil certain places(contrary to now where all resources exist to certain extents everywhere).

I think Kenshi is gonna feel even cooler once you have to do stuff to get your energy and have to continually feed yourself. I like all the survivalist stuff and it certainly fits in with Kenshi. I'm sad that Starbound(without mods) has moved away from it and went all casual on us. I have faith that Kenshi is only getting better. That said maybe I should be stocking up on food now. My >100 squad is gonna be in trouble if that change happens when I'm not prepared for it!

[lucidmadness]

I would love to see something like this too

https://www.tesla.com/solarroof