Thermal Solar Power (Lite)

This is a fork of the mod Thermal Solar Power by MarximusMaximus, CyberWizard2261 and Caxx. It is meant to be a more focused, balanced and realistic take on solar thermal energy that incorporates a (slightly) challenging heat loss mechanism. Many buildings and/or tiers thereof have been removed, but new features pertaining to gameplay, info and mod compatibility have been added, while visuals have been improved. A few technical issues were resolved as well.

The main purpose of the mod is to provide an aesthetically pleasing alternative to solar + accu + power lines, which in my opinion is boring and visually unappealing.

Main assets:

Thermal Solar Panel: Generates heat from sunlight, slowly dissipating it again during the night. Has a much larger version too, for better game performance.
Basic Heat Exchanger: Produces 165°C steam from water and heat.
Basic Heat Pipe: Transports heat. Cheap, but has only a quarter of the capacity and half the transfer rate.

Unlockable right after Automation Science Pack, these provide an early renewable energy source that also remains relevant in the late-game, without breaking game balance or rendering alternatives obsolete.

New features & mechanisms:

Heat dissipation: The Thermal Solar Panel slowly dissipates heat in proportion to its temperature above 15°C, so other energy storage will be necessary if you want to minimize heat energy loss. Since the panels take a while to heat up again in the morning, energy production normally happens only about 52.5% (rather than 70%) of the day cycle at full utilization, making power outages more consequential. Heating steam to higher temperatures with the panels will be less efficient, so don't bother!
Configurability: Basic energy parameters can now be adjusted for the Thermal Solar Panels and the Basic Heat Exchanger.
Optional Mod Integration: Not much to see here for Factorio 2.0! There is a small fix for Pyanodon.
Sunlight intensity: Perhaps more of a fix, output of the panels is now affected by the solar power multiplier of the surface they are built on.

Improved visuals/menus/tooltips:

Thermal Solar Panel: Added high-res graphics (AI-upscaled & retouched) along with simple shadows, improved heat pipe connection visuals. Made tooltip properly display current max. heat energy output. Also created a makeshift sunlight indicator visible only while gui is open (UPS-friendly).
Basic Heat exchanger: Fixed visual glitch where heat pipe was stuck on max heat glow, among other things. Has a color option too as of v.1.2.0.
Menus: Made item & recipe icons distinguishable from others and grouped them together.

Balancing & user configuration:

With each panel outputting 67.5kW of heat energy, 27 panels (or 3 large ones) will be more than enough to drive 1 Basic Heat Exchanger, powering 1 Steam Engine (outputting 900kW) while storing sufficient steam in a tank for the night (~5.6k units of capacity is needed). The output can still be configured within the range of 37.5-250kW (see FAQ about efficiency). Throughput of the Basic Heat Exchanger can be configured too as an energy equivalent.
The solar thermal complex requires water and takes a while to get going, but in return it is easier to manufacture and set-up requires slightly less space than Solar + Accu when taking coal-fired backup power into account (although it has a much lower discharge rate). The idea is to make the solar thermal complex cheaper and slightly better on the large scale for reliable baseload power, while Solar + Accu remains more of an expensive but convenient solution that handles spikes in energy demand better and can be used in places with no water access.

Various Remarks:

Of the entire solar thermal complex, only the steam engines need to be connected to the electric grid, which is very nice.
Heat and steam can be renewably produced, which may be useful for coal liquefaction or processes added by various mods.
The steam can be used as a lossless energy storage medium to deal with intermittency (because Factorio...).
The solar complex can be directly combined with e.g. coal-fired boilers as backup while using the same steam engines. Space-saving!
Discharge rate can eventually be doubled by replacing Steam Engines with Steam Turbines.

Mod recommendations:

Extra Storage Tank: Minibuffer (not updated for 2.0 as of 2024-10-26) allows for more compact setups with its 1x1 fluid tank. The mod Fluid Level Indicator can help you keep tabs on the contents of your steam storage. And if you would like a serious upgrade to the solar thermal complex, check out the mod Cheese's Concentrated Solar.

Debugging & info:

Added various helpful commands. Check them out with the command /tspl help.

Also read the FAQ about design choices, compatibility and performance impact.