An interesting post on Northern Woodlands yesterday, How Insects Spend the Winter. I knew some of this but learned much more… adds to the perspective as I trundle through the snow-covered forest. By the way, have you noticed the days getting a bit longer?? Yes, spring (and the insects’ return) is coming! Between being a weather geek and being a solar-powered off-gridder I have a bit of an obsession with daylight hours and created a dataset to graph the day length pattern… you will see that now we’re beyond 4 weeks post-solstice day length begins accelerating 🙂
Bruce Grey Woodlands Association 
Excellent energy example Neil.
How much battery storage do you have and how do you keep your solar panels clear (snow etc) in winter?
Hi Roger – I just replaced the battery bank with a set of new gel cells totalling about 500 amp-hours. I have several static solar panel arrays. There is a tilted (east-west) array which is the main producer Apr-thru-Sep. And there is a vertical array which is primary while the sun’s arc is lower in the sky Oct-thru-Mar. Being vertical (imagine a billboard of solar panels) it does not accumulate snow and, as a bonus, it benefits from snow reflection as well as direct sun hit. Since PV panels function most efficiently the colder it is, mid-late winter is often peak production from that vertical array, with nearly 3000 free watts for the taking on a bright day. Now, if only I had a Tesla to charge up 😉