As with any battery, Solar becomes weaker as he draws upon his stored-up energy for various purposes. If too much energy is expended, however, Solar weakens rapidly. More than once, he has nearly died when his energy reserves were depleted too rapidly or too greatly. In some cases, Solar has absorbed so much energy that he has grown to an enormous size, only to shrink back to normal dimensions once the excess energy has been expended. In one case, he absorbed energy from a pile of nuclear waste that his arch-enemy, Nuro, was using to power a gold accumulator in the Pacific Ocean. Fearing that he would lose so much energy that he would not be able to maintain control over his own atomic structure, Solar was forced to retreat. He later resolved this problem, and then returned to destroy the accumulator, thereby foiling Nuro's plot.