Usage and Benefits of Solar Lighting

admin — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 23:31:57 +0000

Many of you have seen the little solar lights that are used as accent lights in gardens or along walkways or whatnot to add aesthetic appeal to a home’s landscaping. In fact, when most people hear the term “solar lights”, that is usually the picture that pops into their head. With the mindset of our society going more and more toward “green technology” (rightly so), we are seeing more and more of these green lighting solutions.

A quick internet search will show that, not only are the solar landscape accent lights very popular, but there are a lot of other types as well. We see motion sensing solar lights, spot lights, outdoor flood lights, commercial perimeter lighting, and many others. In fact, some cities are even upgrading street lights to solar power. It is also possible to have indoor solar lights and solar skylights!

Not long ago, solar technology was such that it was not practical for use with many lighting applications. The solar cells just couldn’t hold enough juice to keep the lights lit for very long. Great advancements have since been made in solar technology facilitating the use of solar security lights, solar post lights, solar flood lights, etc. These advancements include the increased use of nickel cadmium batteries to store the energy collected from the solar cells and LED lights that put out more illumination and use much less energy than more tradition forms of lights.

So what are the benefits of using solar lights as opposed to more traditional lighting solutions? The most obvious advantage would be that they use a free, renewable source of energy – the Sun. Yes, the batteries do need to be replaced every couple of years or so, but if you compare the cost of the batteries to the cost of the electricity you will save, you will find that the savings is significant. The carbon footprint on our environment is also much, much smaller.

Another big advantage to using solar lights is that each light is its own self contained unit. That means that if you have a set of lights, and one of the lights fails, the rest of the lights continue to operate. If the power to your home is interrupted, your solar lights continue to function. You also don’t have to worry about running wires from one light to the next to a power source – they are wireless lights!

As you can see there are many uses for and benefits to going with solar lights. Please check back often for more in depth articles about the improving technology, uses for, and benefits of going with solar lights. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or topics you would like covered. Our next topic will be outdoor solar lights.

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Usage and Benefits of Solar Lighting