Choosing Outdoor Solar Patio Lights
Before buying outdoor solar patio lights, it’s worth thinking about why you’re installing them. Is it for functional / safety use or is it mainly as a decorative light, to give your patio more atmosphere?
If you’re looking usable outdoor lighting you’ll need brighter lights and to install them in the places around your patio and garden where you actually need light – near doors or places you’ll be eating or entertaining friends, for example.
If your solar lighting is more for mood and atmosphere you can get pretty creative with positioning. Try putting them in trees shining down into the patio / garden or along the edges of your patio / deck. It’s a good idea to experiment with where to put your solar lights – live with them for a couple of evenings before settling on a location.
Bear in mind that the only rule with placing outdoor solar lights is that it must be in a place where that gets at least a few hours of direct sunlight a day – otherwise they won’t be able to recharge enough for night use. Sounds obvious, but it’s easy to forget that.
If you really want to have evening light in a place that doesn’t get much sunlight during the day, consider buying an outdoor solar light kit that has a separate solar panel on a cable. That will allow you to place the panel in direct light while the solar lights themselves can be in a more shaded area.
Solar Powered Keychain Flash Lights
Keychain Solar Flashlight
Keychain flashlights can be super handy – but it’s only when you really need one that you realise you haven’t checked the battery for about eight years and it is very definitely dead.
What you need is a Solar Powered Keychain Flashlight from Gamasonic. Just leave your keys in the sun once in a while and you’ll always have light – this flashlight only needs 30 minutes charge time for 3 hours of power.
There are four different styles of solar flashlight in the range.
Solar Light Cap
The Hat that's a Solar Charger
Looks like the ubiquitous baseball cap has had a solar makeover. UK company Solar Select has come up with a hat that has a solar panel on the top part of the brim and LED lights on the under side. Result? After a full day hiking you’ll have enough light stored to carry on for half the night.
The initial charge takes three days (!) after which the hat takes eight hours to fully recharge. Each full solar charge will knock out five hours of light. The light can shine from 6 feet / 1.8 meters up to 30 feet / 9 meters ahead of you, depending on the jauntiness of your cap angle.
The manufacturer notes the product is “hands free” – which is definitely something most people look for in a hat.
The Solar Light Cap from Select Solar (UK).
New Jersey’s Solar Street Lights
Drive across New Jersey and you’re likely to see more than a few solar powered traffic signs.
The solar powered signage looks just like a normal sign, except it has flashing lights powered by a small solar panel. The flashing lights make the signs more effective than normal because they can be seen from a greater distance – plus the signs are low maintenance.
Police in Lyndhurst, one of the towns using the new signs, say the new eco-friendly stop and yield signs have reduced accidents caused by driver inattention.
Quoted in the Boston Herald, Timothy Collins, Wayne’s superintendent of roads seems greatly impressed. “You are not paying an electric bill to operate these lights. … These things function 24 hours a day, 365 days a year in all weather conditions and haven’t failed once in three years, and they have shown no signs of any issues.”