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, which in my opinion is boring, ugly, and doesn't fit well with the 'industrial' theme of the game.

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 Optics, 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: Recipes and tech can be adapted in a predefined way to various overhaul mods. So far, these include Industrial Revolution 3, Krastorio 2, Sea Block (with the official pack) and Space Exploration.
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 (relevant for mods such as Space Exploration).

Improved visuals/menus/tooltips:

Thermal Solar Panel: Added simple shadows, improved heat pipe connection visuals, added a custom heating glow effect visible at high temperatures (you probably won't get the chance to see it...), added optional high-res graphics (AI-upscaled & retouched). 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.
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 some mods.
The steam can be used as a lossless energy storage medium (because Factorio...).
More space can be saved by replacing 2 steam engines with 1 steam turbine later on. Alternatively, discharge rate can be doubled by just replacing them all.
The solar complex can be directly combined with e.g. coal-fired boilers as backup while using the same steam engines. Space-saving!
Keep in mind that larger fields of panels will lose a bit more heat, since the temperature equilibrium is higher in panels far from the Heat Exchanger.
The large solar panels allow slightly higher energy production in practice due to easier heat transfer (it's technical...).

Mod recommendations:

Space required can be reduced a bit further by maximizing utilization of steam turbines with mods such as Superheating (Balanced) or Pre-Heated Exchanger, while providing opportunity for some new and interesting setups involving coal, oil or nuclear energy. Extra Storage Tank: Minibuffer allows for small and compact setups with its 1x1 fluid tank. Flow Control can make piping even more compact and allow for some better fluid control with valves (instead of pumps). The mod Fluid Level Indicator can be helpful for keeping 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:

There was an issue where the thermal panel's heat generating script would sometimes stop working upon mod change/update. I improved the code to handle this by automatically rebuilding the internal list of panels on all surfaces "on configuration changed". So far it seems to work well.
The command "/tspl info" was added to show the solar power multiplier along with the maximum temperature that can theoretically be achieved by the thermal panels at current mod settings.
The command "/tspl reset" was added to allow immediate rebuilding of the list of panels as well as emptying any "solar-fluid" content (for the sunlight indicator) from their buffer.
The command "/tspl unlock" was added to allow immediate access to all recipes from this mod, without having to research the tech.

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