Anyone else finding the weather this winter proper useless for solar?

Honestly, my garden office setup has been absolutely struggling since November. Running a Victron MPPT and even on what passes for a "clear" day up here I'm barely seeing 20% of rated output. The panels are doing their best but four hours of weak low-angle sun just doesn't cut it when you're trying to run a monitor, desk lamp, and keep the place above freezing.

I've had to drag an extension lead from the house twice this week already, which defeats the whole point really.

A few things I'm curious about from others:

• Are you compensating with a larger battery bank? I've got 200Ah of Fogstar lithium but I'm genuinely wondering if I should have gone bigger for winter resilience
• Has anyone added supplementary wind? I keep looking at small turbines but the reviews seem all over the place
• What's your minimum "acceptable" daily harvest? I'm trying to work out if I'm being unrealistic expecting the system to cope December through February

The angle thing is doing my head in as well — I've got my panels at a fixed 30° and I know tilting steeper for winter would help, but my mounting situation makes that awkward.

Feels like off-grid in the UK genuinely requires either massive oversizing or a hybrid approach. Anyone else reconsidering their setup after this winter, or is this just normal and I need to reset my expectations?

@TransitConvert know exactly what you mean. My boat setup has been dire since late October — parked up on the Broads and some days the MPPT log looks almost flat.

What's saving me is having beefed up the battery bank last autumn — running Fogstar Drift lithium now so at least I'm drawing on decent reserves from the better autumn days rather than relying on daily generation.

Honestly for winter I've basically shifted my mindset: solar is supplemental until March, and my small Honda genny covers the deficit. Painful to admit after spending all that money on panels but that's the reality of UK winters.

One thing worth checking — panel angle. I repositioned mine to about 60° for winter and squeezed noticeably more out of the low sun angle. Might be worth experimenting if your mounting allows it.

My tiny house panels spent December generating enough power to run a LED torch... maybe.

Been tracking my motorhome's daily yield figures since October and it makes for pretty grim reading. Running 400W of panels through a Victron SmartSolar and I've been averaging around 150-200Wh on overcast days — nowhere near enough to keep the Fogstar lithium happy without some hookup top-ups.

Quick question for the group: are any of you adjusting panel tilt angles over winter to compensate for the lower sun angle? I've been meaning to rig up something adjustable rather than just leaving them flat-mounted. Does it actually make a meaningful difference to yield, or is the cloud cover so consistent that it barely matters?

Also wondering whether anyone has data on whether east-west split orientation performs better than south-facing only during these low-light months — I've seen conflicting things written about it.

@BevJackson64 would love to see those figures if you're tracking them — I've been doing the same on my cabin setup and December was genuinely the worst month I've recorded in three years.

What's saved me is having properly oversized battery capacity (running Fogstar Drift LiFePO4) so I can bank energy on the rare decent days. Also tilted my panels steeper — around 60° — for winter sun angles, which has made a noticeable difference even on overcast days since you're at least catching what diffuse light there is more efficiently.

The Victron MPPT logging through VRM is brilliant for this kind of analysis if anyone isn't already using it. Depressing to look at, but at least you know exactly where you stand rather than guessing why your batteries are flat again.

@DODQueen @BevJackson64 — I'd be curious to see a comparison too. My shepherd's hut setup logged a genuinely heroic 4.7Wh on the 19th December. The Victron app showed it in green, bless it, optimistic to the last.

What I have learned from three winters of this particular misery is that the angle matters enormously once the sun drops below 20° elevation. I shimmed my ground-mount up to 60° tilt back in October and squeezed probably an extra 15–20% out of what little light we're actually getting.

Not a solution, obviously. More of a rearranging-deckchairs situation. The real solution for my emergency backup requirements has been accepting that November through February is generator season and making peace with that fact, however much it offends my off-grid sensibilities.