Solar power

We've just joined the select band of photovoltaic solar panel owners! At long last we now have a PV cell 'array' mounted on the house ready to charge up the NiMh battery to which it is attached once the sun appears from behind the clouds. Slight problem there - January this year has proven very lacking on the sunlight front so there's not much PV activity taking place.

As for the 'array' - it's a 200mm by 200mm panel mounted on the side of the house and connected to an LED outside light. With building works due to start in the near future I couldn't see much point sorting out mains wiring for an outside light - so I went for the solar option. It worked really well for the first few days thanks to some sunshine at the start of the month. Since then sunlight has been virtually non-existent, and even daylight has been minimal at times. Hence we've run the battery flat so the light isn't currently working - ah, the joys of being green!

Hopefully we'll see the sun again sometime soon and we can all have our batteries charged once more!