Solar charging circuit question
Seems to me that your charger is wasting milliwatts unnecessarily into the diode D2, resistor R4 and other components. Why not just connect the solar directly to the batteries and have a zener (+resistor) in parallel with the batteries to eat all the excess power when the voltage reaches 2,75 volts?

That way all the milliamps from your solar would go to the batteries. If someone feels it's a bad idea, please comment.



Edit: At least one bad idea is that if there's no forward diode D2 (or some other circuit for that purpose) and it's dark, then the battery is discharged to the panel. See Russel's remarks below.