Solar Christmas Lights
This is quite a recent trend from Christmas lights manufacturers. Not surprisingly, it’s probably in response to the current dire economic conditions. In this post, I’m going to start off by briefly give an overview on how solar Christmas lights work. Then I’ll discuss how they provide you with cost savings and end with some of the ways you can do your decorations with these lights. After reading through this, you would be more inclined to consider solar lights over the traditional forms of lighting for the coming holiday season.
Solar Christmas lights essentially function in the same manner as solar powered garden lights. They consist of a solar panel to absorb the sunlight, a controller board connected to a battery in which the converted electricity is stored, and an optical sensor that detects whether there is light or darkness in the surrounding. So straight away, you’ll already see some of the benefits. These lights won’t use power from your mains since their power source is the sun as they charge during day time. Also, you don’t have to be constantly vigilant to know when to turn the lights off when not needed – it’s pretty much automatic. Such efficient energy usage is definitely most welcomed especially nowadays.
The energy cost savings can be attributed to the type of bulbs used in these solar lights. Being LED bulbs, they use less energy than the traditional incandescent bulbs. Also, they last much longer with good quality LED solar lights possessing rated lifetimes of up to 100,000 hours. Thirdly, they tend to burn brighter than the old style bulbs. So you can now enjoy better lighting decoration for your home at a lower cost.
At the moment, you might find that the range of shapes and colors of solar Christmas lights to be limited. This can only improve over time as demand increases. This is more than offset by the cost savings they can achieve. There are other flexibilities offered by solar lights. Since they generally use a battery, they won’t need to be connected to a power outlet. For example, normally you place your Christmas tree in a particular corner of your house because it’s closest to an outlet. Otherwise, you might be running those annoying (and potentially dangerous) long extension cords across your room. If you used solar string lights, you wouldn’t face these issues. With this in mind, you can probably start to imagine some of the other possibilities on decorating your home – e.g. draping colored solar lights across your fence.
Remember, Christmas is a time of joy which doesn’t need to be costly to you and your family each year.
Posted: September 15th, 2009 under Selection.
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