Solar String LED Lights To Brighten Up Your Garden
Solar Star LED Lights
They come with their own small solar panel that can be driven into the ground a little way from where you want to hang the outdoor lights. Then, after a day of solar charging, when the light fades they automatically turn themselves on.
Each solar star light string measures 23ft / 7m in length and you can even buy a double pack if you feel like going a little crazy. Each engery saving LED light will provide up to six hours of solar powered light per night. In winter, when a full solar charge might not be possible, regular rechargeable batteries can be used as a power supply for up to fifteen night without needing a recharge.
Inexpensive Solar Shed Light
As solar lighting keeps growing in popularity, so the choices can become more bewildering. As with anything, solar shed lights come in many shapes, sizes and budgets.
For this post, let’s assume you’re on a budget. Maybe you just want to experiment in solar lighting before investing a lot of money. Fair enough.
The Sun Shed Series from Silicon Solar is about the most inexpensive solar shed light we’ve seen. The manufacturer claims an eight hour run time through an “ultra efficient LED light”. The solar panel of shed light is on a swivel making it easy to position to capture the most energy and it comes with a generous ten foot electrical cord.
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.
Solar LED Address Numbers
House guests will never get lost again once you’ve installed a set of solar powered address lights. As soon as the sun goes down, these Solar LED Address Numbers automatically switch on two large white LED lights. This gives a backlighting effect to the cutout numbers – allowing your house number to be clearly seen from some distance.
The LED lights will run for eight to ten hours on a full solar charge.
Follow Your Path with Solar String Lights
Along with solar rock lights, solar string lights are one of the easiest and most flexible ways to get started with solar lighting in your garden.
As the name suggests, these light kits have LED lights on a string – a bit like Christmas lights but with less tinsel :)
Where they really shine – pun intended – is if you want to provide a line of light around an irregular shape like a curved path or drive, for example. Because the lights are on a string, it’s very easy to position the cable and lights so that they follow unusual shapes.
Check out these solar string lights – 14 bulbs with a string that’s 420 inches long, meaning you can place your solar lights up to 32 inches apart. What we like most about this particular solar kit is there’s only one charging unit needed for the whole lot and each light has its own hook, so you can get creative by hanging the lights in trees, bushes or fencing.
DIY Solar Energy Starter Kit
DIY Starter Solar Kit
This neat little kit from Sundance Solar includes everything the DIY-er needs to setup a small but useful solar recharging station. Using this kit you should be able to power smaller electrical appliances like lights, radios, laptops & computers, fans – even a small TV.
More powerful solar kits are also available that can power an entire office.
The 20 Watt version of the Starter Solar Kit is available from Solar Sundance for $349.