Solar panel

Lister and Confidence go for a space walk along the outer hull of Red Dwarf.
Numerous solar panels can be seen along the outer hull.
("Confidence & Paranoia", Series I)

Solar panels outside the sleeping quarters

A solar panel is a technology which can absorb rays from a star to generate electricity or heating.

Although the JMC mining spaceship Red Dwarf was powered by a central fusion reactor, fueled indefinitely by the interstellar winds through the Front Ramscoop, the ship also had a number of solar panels along it's outer hull for providing extra power. One such solar panel was right outside the porthole window of Lister and Rimmer's sleeping quarters.

When Lister was suffering from space pneumonia, his inner confidence was manifested as "Confidence". Confidence helped Lister deduce where Rimmer had gotten the skutters to hide the hologram disc of Lister's old girlfriend Kristine Kochanski - behind the solar panel outside their sleeping quarters; it being so close so that Rimmer could laugh at Lister.

Lister and Confidence took a space walk to retrieve the disc, and indeed found it behind the solar panel. However, the space walk resulted in Confidence unintentionally committing suicide, and when Lister returned to the ship it turned out that the hologram disc turned out to be a copy of Rimmer's, since Rimmer had anticipated that Lister would find it. ("Confidence & Paranoia", Series I)

Trivia

• The solar panels of Red Dwarf are not enough to meet the gigantic power requirements of the ship on their own, as seen when the ship was left without the main engines. Under these circumstances, Kryten surmised in the Science Room that they only had a few months, or even weeks, left until they had no power at all. (Better Than Life novel, "White Hole", Series IV)