Ah, I wasn't clear. Mine is not a drain-back system so there is fluid in it all the time.
The system basically does nothing at this time of year. The skies here are cloudy at year end. Early in the year we get lots of clear skies though, and that is when the system really works well. Plenty of heat collected even if it is below -30C outside.
The temperatures never get too high in my system unless we get a power outage and lots of direct sun at the same time. I extract the heat very effectively and mostly put it into the central heating. So most of the time the temperatures never exceed 60C. It really is better to run the system cooler if possible. That seemed counter-intuitive to me when I started and took me a while to understand.
When the pipe joint leaked the system got well over normal boiling point and the pipework was making a very ominous noise - bad enough that I kept away from it in case it exploded. I don't know the temperature it got to as I had nothing available to measure that high, but it melted the solder on the joint.
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