Winter battery care

I see a lot of people having problems with batteries (leisure and starter) going flat during winter storage, and some are baffled because they have solar panels to maintain them.

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The thing is, solar panels only respond to sunlight and their output rating is based on midsummer sunshine which is directly overhead.

During the winter months there are several issues that affect the output. First, the hours of daylight available are drastically reduced; there are as little as seven hours of light a day at winter solstice in the UK. Add to that, the angle of the sun’s rays hitting the panels is greatly reduced and the output drops off massively.