These supply a small amount of energy to your ship however they are the cheapest way to upgrade your ships energy.
When placing these on your ship you need to aim for surface area not volume. For example a long thin and wide solar panel will be more effective than a large cube with only a small surface area.
Stats in comparison to a hull block
Mass: 1/6th, 0.1666x
Durability: 1/1, 1.0x
Credits: 11/5, 5.0x
Materials, 1/1, 1.0x
Power generation.
1 MW per surface area, unaffected by material.
If packed optimally, this equates to a maximum of 120 MW per kM³ of volume, which falls between Trinium and Xanion Generators in terms of energy density (but at a far lower resource cost!).
1x1x1 cube, 6 MW. 1x1x10 prism, 42 Mw. (2 1x1, and 4 1x10) 1x10x10 prism, 240 Mw. (4 1x10, 2 10x10) 10x10x10 prism, 600 Mw. (6 10x10)
1x1x1 costs 61 credits and 5 Res for 6 Mw. 10.166 Credits and .8 Res for 1 Mw. 1x1x10 costs 611 credits and 50 Res for 42 Mw. 14.5 Credits and 1.19 Res for 1 Mw. 1x10x10 costs 6111 credits and 500 Res for 240 Mw. 25.46 Credits and 2.083 Res for 1 Mw. 10x10x10 costs 61111 credits and 5000 res for 600 Mw. 101.9 Credits and 8.33 Res for 1 Mw.
Currently the equation does not support the tooltip's statement. Tiny cubes work better than large flat panels.