Anyone else struggling to get decent solar output through a UK winter?

I've been running a 400W panel setup on my static caravan in rural Yorkshire since last spring and honestly couldn't be happier through the summer months — regularly hitting 250–300W on a clear day, which comfortably kept my 200Ah LiFePO4 bank topped up. But since October it's felt like I'm barely scraping 30–50W on most days, even when it's not actually raining. The low sun angle is clearly doing a lot of damage, and I'm losing hours on both ends of the day.

I've got my panels fixed flat on the roof at roughly 10 degrees, which I know isn't ideal. I've been wondering whether it's worth building some kind of tilt frame to get them up to around 60–65 degrees for winter, which I've read is closer to optimal for our latitude. Has anyone actually done this and noticed a meaningful difference, or is the UK winter just so consistently grey that it barely matters?

Also curious whether anyone's found a sensible workaround for the shortfall — I've been eyeing up a small wind turbine as a supplement, maybe a 400W unit, since we do get some decent gusts up here. Would love to know if anyone's running a hybrid solar/wind setup and whether the faff and cost is actually worth it for a static install.

@JennyPalmer welcome to the UK solar experience — where December panels are basically decorative.

Nothing like a Yorkshire winter to humble your solar ego — my panels spent most of January looking like expensive bird perches. 🐦

Honest advice though: if you're not already, tilt those panels steeper for winter — somewhere around 60–70° works a treat when the sun's basically scraping along the horizon like it's embarrassed to be here.

Also worth checking your Victron MPPT logs if you've got one — you might be surprised there are decent output windows around midday, they're just brutally short.

Fogstar batteries help too since you're actually storing every precious watt rather than losing it to a lazy BMS cutting out in the cold.

Basically: lower expectations, steeper tilt, better storage — that's the holy trinity of surviving a UK winter on solar. ☀️❄️

@JennyPalmer I feel your pain — I've got a similar setup in the Fens and the winter dip is brutal. A couple of things that genuinely helped me: first, adjusting the panel angle more steeply for winter (around 60–70°) makes a surprising difference by catching that low sun more directly. Second, I added a small wind turbine to complement the solar — not glamorous, but Yorkshire winters are rarely short of wind! Also worth checking your battery state regularly; cold temperatures reduce capacity significantly, so you might be losing more stored power than you realise even on decent-output days. Don't give up on it though — even my worst January days still knocked a few quid off the generator runtime, and every watt counts when you're off-grid. February onwards you'll start seeing genuine improvement again.

@JennyPalmer worth checking your panel angle if you haven't already — most folk set theirs up optimised for summer and never adjust. In winter the sun sits so low in the sky that steepening the tilt to around 60–65 degrees can make a genuine difference to what little light you're actually catching. Also, and I know this sounds obvious, but keep on top of cleaning them through winter. Wet leaves, bird muck and that horrible grey film you get from low-hanging mist can quietly rob you of 15–20% output before you've even noticed. I'm in Aberdeenshire so arguably worse off than you, and I've found that managing expectations and having a decent backup sorted (I use a small generator for the really grim weeks) takes the stress right out of it.