Some of you may recall when I started this thread, with the above question, last year. Most people (including myself) were fairly doubtful as to whether it was a viable idea.
Some 8 months on, I have at least got around to conducting a preliminary experiment, and the results make me abit more optimistic, at least during the summer months ...
I invested £1.50 in a diddy "solar garden light" from PoundLand. It has a coupleof little LEDs, a tiny 'solar panel' (about 30mm squatre) and an equally tiny battery (1.2V 40 mAh).
For the past couple of weeks or so, I've had it sitting indoors on a windowsill, pointing at a West-facing window through a net curtain. Every night at dusk (pretty 'late dusk') the LEDs come on very brightly (I imagine 'as bright as is intended). Depending upon how much sun there has been, the LEDs remain pretty bright for at least 3-4 hours, sometimes appreciably longer, and then gradually start to 'fade'. I've never been up late enough to see them 'fade to nothing', and they have invariably been switched off by sunlight by the time I get up. The same then happens the next day, and subsequent days, the battery clearly getting charged up enough during the (currently long) hours of daylight for the LEDs to be bright when they come on.
If that can be achieved with a tiny solar panel and battery, and a couple of diddy LEDs, I suspect that an appreciably more 'substantial' unit wiould before quite well, at least during summer. It remains to be seen whether I could get enough charging dine to be useful during the short days of Winter!
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Kind Regards, John