Does Solar Power work in winter?

JenniO

I know this may sound silly. It's just that I have 2 sun jars, which are great little kilner style jar lights and when the sun is out the jars look great but on cloudy days they don't work so well on the nights. It got me thinking about solar garden lights, panels etc? Will they work just as good on grey wintery days? Anyone with any experience from last year?

Jenni

Cardew

JenniO wrote: »

I know this may sound silly. It's just that I have 2 sun jars, which are great little kilner style jar lights and when the sun is out the jars look great but on cloudy days they don't work so well on the nights. It got me thinking about solar garden lights, panels etc? Will they work just as good on grey wintery days? Anyone with any experience from last year?

Jenni

Solar does not work as well on grey wintery days.

The output from solar panels used to heat water can be accurately measured and is typically 12 to 15 times higher in mid summer than mid winter.

angelsmile

It also means that solar panels are very useful in hot countries or desert countries. It is not good during winter, and rainy days.

choille

It's all down to UV light - doesn't have to be brilliantly sunny for them to work.
What they work best in is where/when there are clear skies. Also they work well near the sea because of bounce back of light.

nmm

We have 3 solar panels going into a 220ah battery bank, we have it set up to run our downstairs lighting, laptop/charger and our router. From October/November time our panels were not doing much at all, our battery state of charge was at 60-70%, over the past month or so its finally started getting better and our battery bank is on 90-100% most of the time now. Although most days we only scraped 0.5amp charge from our panels during the winter months it was enough for the batteries to cope we have 200w of solar panels, which are now outputting 6-8amp an hour.

eool

hi
we use solar panels on our homecar. it works also on cloudy days,but in a lower capacity.
you are invited to look for the words: homecar solar (in google search)


eool

Mankysteve

I thought this guy had been blocked by now. This is an UK site we run on 240v not 110v it would be absolutely useless for most people.

MikellKaizer

Maybe it will work but limited capacity of energy might be stored in solar cell...

That's my analysis because solar cell needs direct heat from sunlight to stored maximum

energy from the sun...

Mankysteve

There two key types of solar cell Amorphous and crystaline. Your sun jar will use the cheaper but less efficient amorphous cells but the ones that you stick on your roof will use crytaline cells while being more expensive will give you greater output but I cant remember the exact figure.