While charging your battery with the solar panel, how will you stop the sun (the earth) at the noon position?
The current might be 400mA at noon in summer but will be much less at other times.
I've been to the Arctic Ocean in northern Alaska and seen the sun doing loops around the sky 24 hours a day. It's pretty impressive. What amazes me is that although the growing season is shorter for plants there, the day is longer. Plants don't really care if the sun rises on time or not. When they get sun, they grow. If they get 24 hours of sun, they grow 24 hours a day. Plants don't need to sleep. When you do the math, plants in the far north actually get more daylight per growing season, often growing to sizes much bigger than plants in the lower regions. The same might be true for solar. If you store up enough energy in the summer time, 24 hours a day, it could last all winter. You just have to spend a fortune on batteries.
Since I now live so close to the equator, the position of the sun in the sky has very little effect on my solar projects. I don't even put much thought into that. In the winter, I don't expect much change, because the sun won't go much lower in the sky. It only moves between the equator and the Tropic lines throughout the year, and since I live on the Tropic of Cancer (in Taiwan), solar is idea here.
The more serious problem we face with solar in Taiwan is the crowding. Most people don't know that Taiwan is the second most crowded place on earth. On this tiny island, we have over 23 million people. As a result, almost no one lives in houses, except the rich, and the farmers in the countryside. Everyone stays in high rise building, so there is little roof area to mount any solar on. I just hang my solar out the window, or better yet, I lay it flat on the edge of the balcony.
I am using CIGS solar panels. They are really new material and they don't have any silicon in them. When I put them back to back with the older silicon based solar panels, there's no competition. Even with the sun at a angle, they still pick up and store and ton more energy. Give it a try.
Every part of the world is different. For example, because England is overcast so often, solar is not as effective there. I don't think solar will solve problems everywhere. What I'd like to do next is get a little wind turbine. Because I live on the 20th floor, we often get a lot of wind, especially on overcast days when solar doesn't work so well. Anyone know where I can buy a portable wind turbine, something not too big? Looks like I might have to build something like that someday, since I haven't found one that fits my needs yet.
As far as the Brunton solar kit goes, it says 400 mAs and 12 volts. But in actually testing in direct sunlight, I see it flucuating between 15 volts and 18 volts. Possibly because the sun is so intense here. So at noon it might be producing a lot more than expected, which means during the rest of the day, I'm still doing fine. Whatever the math and the notion about the position of the sun are, in actual use, I'm getting more charge out of a 6.5 watt solar panels than I need. I've filled all my hand-held portable devices (i-pod/cell phone/etc.) 10 AA batteries and 3 AAA batteries. Still we have sunny days and I have nothing left available to charge. That's why now I'm experimenting with moving up to a bigger system, like with the D Cell and the lead-acid battery.
If you go around and recharge all the batteries in your remote controllers (I must have a dozen of them by now), that will last you a year or so. If you recharge all your hand held stuff about twice a week, that will keep those items off the grid, too. Yeah, when you do the math, it's not cost effective and I'm not even putting a tiny dent in the global pollution problem. But hey man, this is just my hobby. And it's teaching me a lot about solar and how a bigger system could work out for an entire house.