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.
Seven Reasons To Love Solar Landscape Lights
There are lots of reasons to love the idea of putting solar landscape lights in your garden, yard or patio. But here are seven to get you thinking.
1 – Let’s start with the obvious: Solar power cuts your power bills.
2 – Solar landscape lights are 100% safe for the environment.
3 – Absolutely no wires. Most solar landscape light kits are made of self-contained units, so they can work independently of each other without needing to dig up your yard or garden to install connecting wires.
4 – You don’t need to be a solar lighting expert. If you can use a screwdriver, you can install solar landscape lights. In fact, some types don’t even use a screw mount – they just sit in place or have a clip connector.
5 – Great warranty and guarantees. Good brands come with lengthy product warranty and are built to last for years, no matter what the weather does.
6 – No maintenance required. Enough said.
7 – Brighter light than traditional landscape lights. Modern solar lighting uses LED bulbs to provide a more powerful, brighter light.
Solar Powered Courtesy Light
If you need some extra lights in a dark front door entrance, garage or poorly lit area of the garden or the outside of your house you might want to consider this solar powered courtesy light.
This cute solar powered gadget senses when motion is detected nearby and powers up the light. It turns itself off again automatically after one minute.
Because it’s solar powered, no tricky electrical wiring is needed and it’ll work even in areas outside where non solar lights would be difficult or expensive to install. When fully charged, the LED light gives off almost as much light as a normal 60W light bulb and will light a similar sort of area.
Owls, Frogs, Gnomes – Fun Decorative Solar Lights
You have to hand it to PnR Solar Store, they really know how to add some fun to the whole solar garden light game. Not only do they have a huge of novelty lights, they’re all on different themes.
Favorites? Hard to choose. But it’s difficult to resist the Snowman Solar Light or the Ladybug Solar Light.
Prices are pretty good too, could be a great way to have some solar fun in the garden.
How to make Portable Solar Garden Lights
Here’s a quick tip to get a little more out of those inexpensive stake-style solar garden lights – the kind with a small solar panel and light on top of a stake that you drive in the garden earth or driveway.
Instead of putting the stake into the ground, put it into a plant pot filled with earth or stones. Now you’ve got a portable solar light – especially useful if you tend to get the most daylight in a different place in your garden, driveway or deck from where you want the solar light at night.
Even better, you can make each solar light look more decorative by using some colored stones inside the pot instead of plain stones or earth. Decorative stone cost more, so fill the pot with garden earth and just add a layer of decorative stones to the top.
Spotlight on Solar LED Lights
One of the biggest trends in solar lights these days is the use of LED lights. Yes, LED is like the lights in those early calculators – but thankfully the light from LEDs these days is a lot brighter.
LED lighting technology is still relatively new and therefore still quite expensive. No doubt the price will come down as they become more commonplace but for the now when you come to buy them you may well find solar LED lights to be twice the price of normal outdoor & garden lights.
What’s up with that? Is that a rip-off?
No. Bear in mind that led bulbs can last 15 years or longer that normal light bulbs. Better still, they typically use 60 -70% less electricity. If you have solar LED lights, of course, your electricity cost savings will go up to a pleasant 100%.
Solar Street Lights – Not For Just Streets
The use of solar street lights has really taken off recently. Many states in the US and many countries around the world now use solar powered street lights as part of their regular street lighting plans.
Sometimes a solar street light will be used to provide light where previously no road illumination had been provided – either because of cost considerations or the impracticality of putting an on-grid light in a particular place. Other times a new solar light will replace an normal light to pass on cost savings to the state or authority involved. Of course, you don’t have to be a governmental organization to enjoy the same economic benefits.
Most solar powered street lighting is sold in stand alone units – each unit being just like a normal street light except that at the very top is the solar panel used for recharging, while the actual light itself is a little further down the pole.
Installation is usually pretty straightforward. And of course, you don’t have to use them on a street – they make great deck or garden lights too. Prices depend largely on the robustness of the construction and the power output of the light and range from around $190 into the four figures range.
