The clocks go back. Your panels do not notice.

Sunrise, sunset and solar noon, either side of the change

The table compares Saturday 24 October, the last day of BST, with Sunday 25 October, the first day of GMT, for the cities this site covers. Times are calculated for each city centre with the NOAA solar position equations and are accurate to within a few minutes. Solar noon is when the sun is due south and highest in the sky, which for a south-facing panel is the centre of the generation curve.

Two things stand out. Sunset jumps from around 18:00 to around 17:00, which is why the evenings feel so much darker on Monday, but your panel was producing very little in that last hour anyway, because the sun is only a few degrees above the horizon. And the sun's height at noon keeps falling through November: by 30 November it reaches only 17° in London and 13° in Edinburgh. A fence, a wall or a neighbour's extension that never shaded your panel in June can now cover it for most of the day.

How much an 800W kit makes from October to December

These are PVGIS-modelled figures for an 800W kit facing due south at a 35° tilt, with standard system losses, using satellite irradiance for each city centre (PVGIS-SARAH3, read on 18 October 2026). They are long-run averages: a bright November will beat them and a grey one will not reach them.

Put plainly, a south-facing 800W kit in London averages around 1.3 kWh a day in November, and around 1 kWh a day in Manchester. That is in the region of what a modern fridge-freezer uses in a day, so in winter the realistic aim is to cover your always-on baseload, not to run the washing machine on sunshine. December is the floor. From January the curve starts to climb again, and by March every city in the table is back above its October output.

Your own address will differ from the city centre, and orientation matters more in winter than in summer, because an east or west-facing panel loses a larger share of the low midday sun. The postcode calculator runs the same PVGIS model for your exact location and orientation.

What to change this week

1. Move clock-based timers an hour earlier. An appliance or immersion timer set to 13:00 to catch the summer peak should now be set to 12:00. Delay-start timers on washing machines and dishwashers count from when you press the button, so check that the cycle now runs somewhere between about 11:00 and 13:00 GMT.
2. Check smart plug schedules. Most app-controlled plugs follow your phone's time zone and adjust themselves, but a schedule built around "peak at 13:00" was built for summer time. Move it to 12:00.
3. Look for new winter shade. Walk past your panel at 11:00, 12:00 and 13:00 on a sunny day. The shadow simulator shows how the low sun moves across your space, and the solar noon calculator gives the exact time of the peak at your postcode.
4. Steepen the tilt if your frame allows it. A steeper angle catches more of the low winter sun and sheds rain and leaves better. It is a small gain, so only do it if the mounting is designed to adjust.
5. Keep the panel clean. Autumn leaves and grime cost a larger share of a small winter output than of a large summer one.

What I am doing personally is simple: I move the dishwasher back to a late-morning start on Sunday and stop expecting the kit to run the laundry until March. The clocks are a useful reminder, not a reason to worry. How much of your winter baseload does your kit actually cover? If you have logged it, I would like to hear the number.

Common questions

• When do the clocks go back in 2026?
  At 02:00 BST on Sunday 25 October 2026, when clocks go back one hour to 01:00 GMT, according to the Royal Observatory Greenwich.
• Do solar panels produce less when the clocks go back?
  No. Panels respond to sunlight, not to clock time, so output on 25 October is the same as it would have been without the change, apart from the normal shortening of the day by about four minutes. The midday peak simply moves an hour earlier on the clock.
• What time is solar noon after the clocks go back?
  Around 11:45 GMT in London, 11:53 in Manchester and 11:57 in Edinburgh at the end of October, compared with roughly an hour later during British Summer Time. The solar noon calculator gives the exact time for your postcode.
• How much does an 800W plug-in solar kit generate in November?
  PVGIS models about 39 kWh for a south-facing 800W kit in London in November, around 1.3 kWh a day, and about 30 kWh in Manchester and Edinburgh. December is lower again, and output climbs from January.