Q: Is this a mod of excellent quality?
A: It seems pretty all right! Mind you, I am not a programmer, and there are various limitations with the game engine that forced me to rely on small hacks for some of the mod's features. But I have taken a long time to refine this mod even after its release, in order to ensure its function.

Q: Why did you remove so many things from the original mod?
A: For more realistic balancing, and to declutter.

• The tech can be researched early on, but even the basic tier of thermal panels easily out-competed alternatives with high output and a large internal heat buffer that solved the intermittency problem all on its own. I wanted the renewable power provided by this mod to have unique features, but remain both balanced and realistic, particularly in relation to photovoltaic solar panels.
• I don't particularly like having tiers of entities that will only be used in the early game, and since the basic thermal panel is already pushing realistic limits of what could be achieved without a concentrating solar tower, I decided to simplify the mod by removing all higher tiers of the thermal panels, heat exchangers and steam engines.
• The Heat Accumulator (and by extension the Evaporation Pond) was already kind of pointless for this mod, but it is directly counter-productive with the new heat loss mechanism, since it just makes it that much harder to break the temperature threshold for steam production. High capacity heat storage can certainly be helpful for nuclear setups, but that is outside the scope of this mod.
• With the removal of higher tiers of buildings, there is little point in keeping the Recycler. Also, Reverse Factory exists.

Q: The information in the tooltip for the panels seems a bit odd!
A: That's not a question. But yes, there is some useless information mixed in due to prototype constraints, which are hard-coded. With some small hacks I managed to properly display the max heat energy output and even create a makeshift sunlight indicator inspired by Cheese's Concentrated Solar! To ensure good performance with many panels, it only displays a snapshot of the current light level while its gui is open. It works by emptying and then filling the buffer with a proportionate amount of "solar-fluid" (the fluid content goes down ever so slowly, since only a consumption rate above 0 is allowed). The fluid could remain on crash, death, disconnection or switch to spectator mode while the gui is open, but it's inconsequential and easily resolved by clicking the entity again (or by using the reset command).

Q: How is mod compatibility?
A: That is hard to say with Factorio 2.0, but it's probably fine. The mod has been updated to work with Quality in Space Age so the heat output of the panels scale with quality tiers (adjusted to roughly match the scaling of Solar Panels), and it also has compatibility with More Quality Scaling, which actually makes the calculation easier. The mod automatically compensates for halved steam conversion efficiency in Pyanodons Coal Processing, and optionally provides parity between the Basic Heat Exchanger and the Boiler, by lowering the heat loss rate so roughly the same amount of electricity can be produced at the higher temperature threshold of 250°C.

Q: What is the performance impact on the game?
A: For the sake of my creative goals, there is a fairly complex "on-tick" script applied to all thermal panels. Since v2.2.0, the mod properly distributes calculations across all game ticks instead of just one every second. For v2.2.2 on my PC (i5-12400F, RTX3070), the time usage of 3125 large panels (enough to produce ~1GW of electricity non-stop) seems to be ~0.25/tick, with an expected spike every second of ~0.5-1.0ms. For a complete thermal solar complex with coal backup, time usage seems to be ~1.85ms/tick on average. And that works plenty well for me.

Q: So how do you calculate the actual power output and efficiency of the thermal solar complex on a given surface?
A: That is surprisingly difficult and can really only be done through simulation or testing. But two key numbers - maximum output (at temperature target) and ideal panel-to-exchanger ratio - are provided by the command /tspl info to help you decide whether to build the complex on your current surface, and if so, with what dimensions. Normally, it's comparable to solar + accu on Nauvis in terms of energy produced pr. area, but it's especially useful on Vulcanus and in most of space due to much higher efficiency! The rest of the planets are unsuitable for it, and that goes for space from between Fulgora and Aquilo and beyond as well.

Q: Will you make any further changes to the mod?
A: I may do a bit of tweaking still, aside from basic maintenance.