Solar Lights Exposed

If you have been recently considering buying outdoor lighting for your home, you should seriously look at solar lights. In this post, I’m going to focus my discussion on the main benefits in choosing solar outdoor lighting. Specifically, I’ll cover cost savings, its practical as well as aesthetic appeal and its ease of operation. After reading through this, you’ll hopefully have an appreciation of solar lighting in general.

Without any sugar coating, I’ll tell you straight out that the initial cost of buying solar lights at the moment is relatively expensive compared to more conventional lighting. However, let me emphasize that over the long run, you’ll recoup that cost and actually experience cost savings from owning solar powered lights. These lights require only a small amount of charge to activate the bulbs. Additionally, the source of the power comes from the absorbed sunlight. Since you would generally only use lights during the night, solar powered lights would be charging their battery during the day time. The LED bulbs generally do not heat up too much and they have a lifetime of about 100,000 hours, meaning they won’t burn out. This saves you money from needing to frequently replace them. So you can easily see how owning a solar light can help you in your back pocket.

Solar yard lights are also known for their ease of operation. Installing them is quite straightforward as there is no messy cabling to deal with. You don’t need to dig up your garden in order to lay down cables. If you are like me and want to minimize or even avoid hard labor, then you’ll find this benefit very appealing. Also, there aren’t any moving parts inside a solar garden light so that makes them virtually a piece of cake to maintain. You can enjoy the beauty of your solar lights without the physical (and possibly eventual emotional) stress.

Placing solar power lights in the appropriate locations in your yard can help in various points. If you use solar path lights, they would provide a form of visual guidance around your garden. With a solar security light or solar spot lights, you can deter burglars from trespassing your property. Aside from the practical applications, you can install solar patio lights for example to improve the aesthetics of your yard. They can be ideal for the casual social gatherings as well as special occasions. So solar lights are definitely multi-purpose.

With the long term cost savings from operating a solar light, minimal physical effort required to install and maintain them, and adding to the safety as well as the visual appeal of your home, there is certainly significant reasons to buy a solar powered light.

Posted: September 15th, 2009 under Benefits.
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There are quite a lot of people in the world that use solar lights, perhaps you’re one of those people. Have you stop to think about how it works? What is the significance of solar energy? Well, it is basically a form of renewable energy (i.e. energy that is generated from natural resources). Other examples of renewable energy include wind power, wave power, hydroelectricity, geothermal power, biomass (e.g. wood burning), biofuel and tidal power. At the moment, solar energy isn’t as popular as the other renewable energy out there.

Solar power involves capturing and harnessing the light from the Sun. So yes, the Sun can be more useful than just a way to get a tan during the summer seasons. There are two ways to convert sunlight into useable electricity – either the direct method or the indirect method. Firstly, the direct method is photovoltaics (PV). It involves using solar cells to collect the sunlight and convert to direct current electricity. So to get the most out of PV systems, you want the panels to face the sun as long as possible during the day. Solar trackers were developed to allow the panels to move with the sun. One major advantage of using PV systems is that they do not need much maintenance over several years of operation once they are set up. From a cost perspective, although the initial capital cost may be relatively significant, the running cost is very low in comparison to the other current technologies available. The second method is the concentrating solar power system (or CSP system). The way this type of solar power works is that mirrors (or lenses) in combination with tracking systems are able to focus a large surface area of sunlight into a concentrated small beam. This then becomes a heat source for conventional power plants.

There are two general categories for solar technologies. This categorization is based on the way the sunlight is captured (or absorbed), converted followed by distribution. The first type is active solar. Here, the sunlight is collected via photovoltaic panels (as described earlier) or solar thermal collectors (either flat plates or lenses to capture heat) and converted into a useable energy source. As for the passive solar method, it avoids using active mechanical systems. It just involves choosing materials which have a favorable thermal mass or can disperse light well, or positioning buildings to face the Sun.

Posted: September 1st, 2009 under Introduction.
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