How to Choose Solar Lighting

Solar lights is becoming increasingly popular as cost efficient way to provide additional ambient lighting in the garden.

Compared with traditional mains lighting, solar is much easier and cheaper to install. If you want to install lights in an area that doesn’t have a local 240 volt supply, solar offers an affordable, solution.

Over the past few years, solar technology has advanced rapidly.

Solar units are suited to LED bulbs which give improved illumination while also requiring less power. To perform efficiently, solar light used to need hours of direct sunlight. The latest solar technology is more efficient at harvesting energy. The speed of technology development is expected to continue to accelerate in the years to come.

There are lots of options of solar garden lighting on sale. Lantern style lighting. Hanging or post mount lanterns. Lots of different styles of fairy light strings. Flush mounted decking lights, recessed into the deck timbers. Solar security spot lighting with motion sensors. These lights will either have a wired panel that you can position nearby, or an integrated panel built into the top of the light unit itself. The location of your lighting will determine which style is best for your circumstances.

Integrated light units often have smaller solar panels and so require more light in order to function well.

Solar lighting with external panels will usually charge faster and be more reliable because the panels are larger and can be placed in the best location to harvest energy. High quality replacement rechargeable batteries will improve the performance of your solar lights. Original batteries from the Far East are often unreliable and so replacing them makes sense.

Using Solar Correctly

The placement of your solar lights is also very important to their performance. Ideally, place your lights to get the maximum direct sunlight per day. Look to locate your solar lights in bright areas of your garden for best results. The more shady the area, the less charge your lights will receive. Buy high quality UK specification lights and they will function well even on overcast days.

Performance will be reduced if trees or buildings cast a shadow over your lights, so try to position them for optimum conditions. During the next few years, as renewable energy becomes more and more important, we can expect solar energy recovery and storage to further improve lighting performance. Year on year, the sales of solar renewable energy products continues to rise.

Free renewable energy such as solar power is not only good for reducing your energy bills, but is kind to the environment too.