this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2026
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Anything between late october and early march?
I can't be arsed to find it again, but there's a company that does solar installs in my country (which to me sounds like they'd be the last people to downplay solar's capabilities) and they have production statistics from some of their installations on their website. I checked out a couple and May or June tended to be about 30x higher than December. I think May was actually the peak production month which in hindsight makes sense because in June the midday sun is really high in the sky and the morning and evening are somewhat more north than you'd normally get so they don't give you much extra.
December, meanwhile, gets about an hour of useful sunlight a week.
This is only around 60 degrees north too, it's gonna be worse for anyone that lives in an actually northern area.
In the UK it's apparently around 4-5x better in summer. That's a bit situation dependent. However, even at 10x, solar still competes well with wind. A useful turbine is still over 10x the cost of an equivalent winter output of solar panels. The only advantage they have is space efficiency. However, if space is that much of a premium, then it's likely messing up low altitude wind as well.
It's also worth noting that solar panels are effectively a rock that makes electricity. Wind turbines have moving parts. They can ice up, and have to shut down in winter storms.
I would love wind to be a viable home companion to home solar, but the maths just doesn't add up. It's amazing at grid scale, but crap at home scale.