Adjusts the solar power curve to be cosine-shaped. In a sense this is a cosmetic mod: The total power production throughout a full day is identical to the vanilla curve, so this doesn't buff/nerf solar power, though peak output is higher and so may need more accumulators to handle the power input.

Installing & Uninstalling

The mod is safe to add mid-playthrough and should function correctly.
To uninstall mid-playthrough:
1. Uncheck the "Enable" setting in the mod settings first
2. Exit the menu and let the game run for a moment
3. Save the game and exit, you can disable/remove the mod now

Compatibility

The mod should be compatible with:
- Modded planets
- Mods that change solar panels
- Mods that change the length of the day/night cycle
- Mods that otherwise change solar power mechanics
- Possibly compatible with mods that change the stages of the day/night cycle (dusk, evening, morning, dawn), depends on the order the mods load in.

The mod is not compatible with:
- Any mod that uses the solar_power_multiplier property.

Details

The cosine curve effect is achieved by adjusting the solar_power_multiplier property of each surface on each tick, thereby transforming the trapezoidal function into a cosine curve. The mod should be compatible with any mods that don't touch this value themselves.

Curiously yet fortunately, the game doesn't seem to use this property at all to my knowledge: In Space Age, different planets achieve different levels of solar power by multiplying the production with the "solar-power" surface property defined in their prototype. Thereby, support for other planets (modded too) comes for free!

Realism

Note: The goal of this mod is not to model truly realistic solar power, just to do a little better than vanilla.

Besides the delicious smooth progression from zero to max power compared to vanilla, the reason you might want to use this mod is for improved realism, so here's some notes on that:

The cosine shaped curve is what you'd expect from a (flat) static solar like those we see in-game, though not taking atmospheric effects into account. As in, it matches the expected result if you put a solar panel flat on the ground on the moon.

If we pretend that the Factorio solar panels are tracking the sun, then the vanilla power curve is actually closer to what you'd expect.