On 30/04/2019 13:50, Martin Brown wrote:
On 30/04/2019 13:31, newshound wrote:

Some years ago I tried to use solar lighting in winter for a small
stables. Admittedly not with a very big panel. Not very much light is
needed in the winter, but it still was a complete failure. Now, like
Martin I manage fine with a SLA swapped out every week or so.

At a stables if you wanted then wind power isn't too bad and you can get
300-500W units intended for topping off batteries in sailing boats.

Expensive, though. And knickable.


Solar in winter is pretty hopeless. There are bunch of solar powered
active radar "please go round the dangerous bend" signs round here which
kill their batteries stone dead every winter. In summer they are in fine
fettle all day but on a frosty winters morning they are useless and they
typically fail about two hours after sunset in mid-winter.


We had a solar powered "speed" sign on an approach road at work which
worked well all the year round. But it had a bloody great panel, at
least four feet square.