Portable Indoor Solar Lights That Go Anywhere
As solar lights & lighting become more commonplace, so product designers are getting more innovative in the way they design solar lights.
Take Lucet Lamps designed by Rui Palma. These small solar lamps are actually three LED lights grouped together with a couple of rubber suckers attached to the base. You can position them wherever you like on a window and they’ll recharge their two AA batteries during the day and give out free solar powered light in the evening.
Just one catch – at the moment these solar lights are a concept design only.
Indoor Solar Lighting with Flexible Solar Tube Lights
Here’s a quick tip if you need a little bit of extra light indoors – flexible solar tube lights. These handy little solar gadgets come with a clip and a gooseneck with a light on the end.
Just attach the clip to a solid surface – the edge of a table, window ledge or the side of a display frame and you’ve got yourself a little extra indoor solar light for very little hassle.
They’re ideal for lighting display cabinets at exhibitions or other venues where you may not have total control over the indoor lighting. Not enough daylight to solar charge? Just recharge the batteries in the normal way.
Wal-Mart Switches to LED Lights
Wal-Mart Stores is planning to fit LED lights in 650 new and renovated stores. The type of LED bulbs Wal-Mart will be using is the LRP-38 by Cree – designed to last up to 50,000 hours and consume 82% less energy than the type of lighting it’s replacing in Wal-Mart stores.
The company has stated that its goal is to double the amount of solar power it uses over the next 18 months as part of its Wal-Mart Project Impact, which aims to have refitted around 70% of its stores by 2012.
Solar Tube Skylights
A relatively recent innovation, solar tube skylights prove that not every type of solar lighting needs to work by converting sunlight into electricity for use later.
As with a normal skylight, the idea is not provide light at night but to provide as much bright light in the day time as possible. With regular skylights you basically get the light that comes in through the window and can illuminate the room space immediately below it. You can’t, for example, have have the light from the skylight on the roof illuminate your kitchen.
The clever thing about solar skylights is they include a mirrored tube – so the light can be carried away from the roof down into your home. Because the tube is flexible you don’t need an absolutely straight path between your roof and the room you want to send the light to. That said, the straighter the tube part of the solar skylight is the more efficient it will be.
The part that fits into the ceiling looks just like a normal light – only no wires and no electricity. Tubular solar skylights are great way to cut down your artificial lighting costs – both power bills and the cost of light bulbs – and work and live in as much natural light as possible.
Are Indoor Solar Lights Right for you?
While many people have heard of solar garden lights for drives and pathways, fewer people consider buying indoor solar lighting. There many areas around the house where it can be difficult or expensive to install traditional, mains powered light systems – garden sheds, garages, gazebos and so on – but these are all ideal locations for a little bit of solar powered magic.
Because there aren’t any mains wires or cables to deal with indoor solar lighting is very easy to install. The most important thing to remember is that your solar panel will need to be at least approximately south facing so that it can capture the most amount of sunlight.
Make sure the spot you choose is free of shade caused by buildings or trees for most if not all of the day.
Kits for indoors are often more expensive than outdoor solar lights – but remember the extra cost will be offset by the reduction in electricity bills and over a relatively short time period will pay for itself.
Solar light cleans your home
UVonion
If the solar powered light on the left looks like an onion that’s because it’s supposed to.
The UVonion from designer Yun Li harnesses solar energy through the daytime and gives off a relaxing glow of ultraviolet light through the night.
Put the solar light in your wardrobe and that same ultraviolet light will clean your clothing for you. Unfortunately, the UVonion is a design only at this stage.
Solar Desk Light
The Sunnan desk lamp is a light that’s strictly solar powered. Inside the base of the light sit three rechargeable AA batteries connected to a small solar panel.
With between nine and twelve hours of daylight the batteries will be fully recharged and give out three hours of solar light after dark. You can find these solar lamps in Ikea – who are currently donating one Sunnan solar light for each one purchased to children worldwide who live in a home without electricity.