If your shed tends to sit unloved and unused during the darker months, adding power will make it much more useful year-round — whether you want to use a heater, add lights, charge power tools, or just keep your phone and laptop charged up. You don't have to go through the complicated process of laying an electricity cable, either; an off-grid solar generator means you can upgrade your shed in an afternoon.

To find out more, I spoke to Brady Sun, Head of Europe at solar generator company Jackery. He gave his top tips for powering your shed safely, starting with the key question: why go off-grid at all?

"Running 20-metre extension cords across damp lawns and patios creates trip and water-exposure risks, while trapping cold air inside your house through open windows," Sun explains "Installing a plug-and-play solar generator inside your shed creates a completely wireless, self-contained power hub — giving you mains-free electricity without the £1,000+ cost of professional electrician fees, armoured cabling, and trench digging."

Choose the right hardware

You can pick up a whole solar power kit, including panels, cables and battery, for well under £1,000 — and because the battery has UK plug sockets built-in, you can start using it immediately without making any modifications to your shed. But which kit should you choose? Sun says it depends on what you want to power.

"Before choosing your setup, calculate the total running and peak (startup) wattage of the devices you plan to run simultaneously," he says.

"If you’re running LED strip lighting, Wi-Fi extenders, laptops, or small battery chargers (~100W-300W load), a compact 500Wh to 1,000Wh unit (like [the] Jackery Explorer 1000 v2) provides quiet, reliable power.

"High-draw power and garden tools (table saws, lawnmowers etc) and electric heaters demand high continuous output and substantial surge capacity. Opt for a 2,000Wh+ expandable system (like the Jackery Explorer 2000 Plus v2) capable of handling 3,000W+ peak surges."

Set up a workbench charging hub

So you've got your solar panels and power station set up. Now you're ready to start tackling all those DIY jobs you've been putting off.

"Flat 18V tool batteries are a major bottleneck during autumn garden upgrades and DIY projects," says Sun. "Setting up a solar power station as a permanent workbench charging hub ensures you to continuously recharge cordless tool batteries right where you work. Paired with solar input, you can cycle through tool batteries continuously without stepping foot inside the house."

No more excuses — you can now fix those broken fence panels and trim that hedge without worrying about your tools running out of juice. It'll be great for a leaf-blower as well.

Optimise solar input

As the days get shorter, positioning your solar panels correctly is particularly important. Sun advises angling foldable solar panels at 30-45 degrees, facing south, to catch lower autumn sun trajectories.

"Choose a power station that supports pass-through charging," he adds. "This allows solar panels to feed power into the battery while the battery simultaneously powers shed lights or laptops."

You should also bear in mind the wet and cold weather that's just around the corner. "Feed solar cables through a rubber grommet or sealed cable port in the shed wall to maintain weatherproofing," Sun recommends.

Protect your battery

Finally, remember to take care of your battery in an unheated shed, which will experience moisture buildup and sharp temperature drops during autumn and winter nights.

"Always place your power station on a raised shelf, workbench, or cabinet rather than directly on cold concrete or wooden shed floors to protect it from dampness and dust," says Sun.

You should also pay attention to cold-weather charging limits. "Lithium (LiFePO4) batteries perform best when charged above 0°," Sun adds. "During freezing winter spells, insulate your setup or bring the battery unit indoors overnight to maintain optimal charging efficiency."

• New and improved solar panel materials have been analyzed
• Two key physics effects combine to create the improvements
• It could help panels break through the 33% energy conversion rate

There's a long-standing physics theory that suggests solar panels will only ever be able to convert a maximum of 33% of the sunlight that comes their way, but a team from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands has detailed a way to harvest extra energy from 'hot' electrons that could push through this limit.

Solar panels work by using the photons from sunshine to jump-start electrons. With the most energetic photons, the result is super-charged, so-called hot electrons, that have the potential to generate significantly more electricity — but the problem is they cool down too quickly and lose the energy as heat before it can be captured.

This new research builds on previous studies reporting a promising new tin-based solar panel material. The material has demonstrated it can keep the heat from hot electrons trapped for around 1,000 times longer — but there have been competing ideas about the mechanism making that possible.

Trying to clarify what was going on, though a series of computer simulations and experimental measurements, was the purpose of the new research: understanding the material's key properties will help scientists build on the potential of the material and potentially scale it up into something that's viable commercially.

Ultra-long cooling

The analysis carried out by the researchers determined that there were two different actions at work. First, an effect called a hot phonon bottleneck creates a heat trap: as the environment around the buzzing electrons warms up so quickly, the electrons end up reabsorbing the thermal energy again, keeping their heat for longer.

Second, what's known as the Burstein-Moss effect creates an atomic traffic jam. As hot electrons cool, they quickly fill up the lowest available energy states in the material, which means other hot electrons can't lose their heat as quickly — it's like an airplane filling up from the front, with passengers arriving later having to walk all the way to the back.

These two effects were already known about, but now we know they're the reason that these special solar panel materials work — and that in combination they provide the extended hot electron cooling that might help to nudge future solar panels above that crucial 33% ceiling, and create clean energy more efficiently.

"It is the simultaneous satisfaction of these electronic, phononic, and chemical criteria, operating under high-injection conditions, that enables the ultra-long cooling times necessary for practical devices," write the researchers in their published paper, which appears in the journal ACS Energy Letters.

• Scientists have developed solar panels that can work up to 10 meters underwater
• The panels can capture up to 324 mWh of energy at that depth
• Each device is expected to last up to five and a half years at a time

A lot of devices are deployed underwater for research and exploration purposes, but powering them all can prove to be difficult, especially if they’re under the waves for a considerable period of time. A new scientific paper, however, has shown that solar panels can be successfully used at depths of up to 10 meters, potentially presenting a new way to keep underwater tech powered up and ready for action.

The paper was published in the Joule periodical and accompanied by a press release explaining its advances. The research was conducted by a team of scientists from Yunnan University in China, who said that a series of solar cells placed 32 feet (10 meters) below the water’s surface in the South China Sea were able to collect enough energy to power up a set of lithium-ion batteries in two hours.

The cells were made from lead halide perovskite with a polymer called polyhexamethylene guanidine hydrochloride added into the mix. This additive helped to enhance the effectiveness of the panels.

According to Wen-Hua Zhang of Yunnan University, “Very few studies have been reported on underwater solar cells, and all of them are focused on very shallow water depths of only two meters or less, a scenario far from catering for requirements of practical application.”

“This work presents the first functional validation of submerged solar cells practically operating at a water depth of up to about 10 meters, greatly broadening their application scope,” Zhang added. The researchers stated that each cell could be deployed for around five and a half years at a time.

The panels captured 1,416 milliwatt-hours (mWh) of electricity at a depth of two meters. This decreased to 752 mWh at six meters and 324 mWh at ten meters. During separate lab testing, the solar panels had a power conversion efficiency of just under 35%.

Paving the way

The idea behind this research is that underwater solar panels could be used to power devices such as sensors, cameras, communications systems, and more.

Many of these objects are stationary for much of the time, so nearby solar cells could help keep them topped up and working without necessarily requiring extensive human intervention.

One question that remains unanswered is how exactly solar panels like this would interact with their environment. For example, it’s likely that they would accumulate biomatter that could hinder their operation, potentially requiring regular cleaning in order to remain fully functional. After all, the sunlight that will power these cells could also promote the growth of plants and animals — a process known as biofouling.

Still, the research seems to have potential. As the authors noted, “This work paves the way for the practical deployment of perovskite photovoltaics in underwater environments, offering a promising route toward self-sustained marine energy systems and autonomous underwater devices.”