Solar Lighting

Introduction to Outdoor Solar Garden Lights

Garden lighting has been with us since before electrical lighting even existed; people have long seen the virtue in extending their enjoyment of their gardens beyond the hours of daylight and so simple candle lanterns (the precursors to today’s solar garden lanterns) were used to illuminate outdoor tables, paths, decks and patios.

Once solar panels (also called photovoltaic cells) of the sort used to power pocket calculators became widely and cheaply available it didn’t take long for outdoor garden lighting designers to realise their potential to provide solar powered garden lighting. Early versions however were, like many fledgling applications of technology, more of a gimmick than anything else and solar powered garden lights swiftly developed a poor reputation due to inadequate light levels and duration.

However, improvements in both solar cell technology and low energy consumption solar LED lights mean that solar garden lighting is now a viable and valid choice for modern outdoor garden lighting. The solar panels attached to a solar garden light are able to store more electricity more efficiently and ensure their internal rechargeable batteries are fully charged at the end of each day; at the same time low energy LED lights are both much brighter and consume far less electricity than traditional incandescent or halogen light bulbs.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Outdoor Solar Lighting

The most obvious advantage of a solar garden light is that it does not need to be connected to a supply of electricity, as does mains powered and low voltage garden lighting, since the solar panel providing power is typically an integral component. This means that unlike their cable bound cousins, solar power garden lights can be easily and quickly installed anywhere and can also be subsequently moved around at will to try out different lighting effects. There are some solar garden light kits that use a separate solar panel (often a group of lights will share the panel) but even these are self-contained systems that are easy to move around.

The second most obvious advantage of solar powered garden lights is no electricity costs. Solar power is free, so solar outdoor lights cost absolutely nothing to run. Coupled with this point is that the LED lights now commonly found in 12v LED garden lighting products often have an effective lifetime of tens of thousands of hours, so outdoor solar lighting requires almost no maintenance.

Not only are solar garden lights very easy to install, cheap to run and maintenance free, they are inherently safe in a garden environment. The integrated solar panel means the electrical supply is fully enclosed and operates on typically 12v low voltage or less electricity, so there is no electrical hazard. Also, LED lights give off virtually no heat, so there is no danger of burning (or even setting fire to) children, animals or plants.

There are however a few disadvantages to weigh against cost and convenience, and foremost among them is probably lack of control. A wired low voltage garden lighting system using a transformer and cables can easily be connected to switches, sensors and timers and different parts of the system can be connected to separate circuits for even greater flexibility and control over the system.

This means you can switch your garden lighting on and off when you want to, or ensure it switches on and off automatically (and/or remotely) at certain times (rather than staying on till dawn). You can even arrange for all or part of your garden lighting (path lighting using markers or flood lights for example) to switch on when the presence of a person is detected as courtesy or security lighting.

The nature of most solar garden lights means that this “master control” aspect is not easily accomplished without wiring sets of solar powered garden lights together, which rather works against the one of the main advantages of solar outdoor lights – the ease with which they can be installed and adjusted because they don’t intrinsically need wiring.

The other clear disadvantage that solar powered garden lights present is their limited effectiveness in winter time particularly in northern latitudes such as the USA, Canada and much of Western Europe. At precisely the time of year when most folk would welcome some light in the garden during the gloomy winter months there is usually insufficient daylight to properly recharge the batteries.

Both these main disadvantages of solar powered garden lighting – relative lack of control and reduced performance during the winter period – can be addressed however, as we shall see later.

Types of Solar Power Garden Lights

As a general rule, whatever you can do with regular 12v low voltage garden lighting you can do pretty much the same using solar landscape lighting. Rock spotlights? Try solar rock lights. Got a pond? Bring it to life at night with solar pond lights. Mark out zones and walkways with solar garden lanterns and the usual spikes and stakes that are often used as pathway or border markers and easily incorporate a small solar panel in the cap.

On the subject of pathways, a great way to lay out an informal path is of course using stepping stones embedded into the lawn so you can easily mow over them. But now you can buy solar stepping stones that have an integrated LED light and solar panel set into the stone itself (using the term loosely since most garden stepping stones are anything but actual stone).

The two pictures to the left illustrate first classic path lights using conventional looking paving slabs with flush LED lights and secondly some rather funky solar/LED stepping stones.

These are highly durable and no more difficult to lay than regular garden paving. They can provide around eight hours light each evening and serve a useful function, yet are decorative and a great addition to most landscape lighting schemes.

More unusual are solar stone ornaments and similar illuminated garden sculptures which add interest during the day and act as a feature at night. Solar globe lights can also be used to similar effect.

Up near the house it’s fun to hang solar rope lights or fairy lights from a pergola or thread them thru a suitable tree, and on outside tables solar moon jars provide decent ambient light. Moon jars look like regular honey jars but capture solar energy during the day then glow during the evening and have the other advantage that they are easy to switch off if required. Moon jars usually emit a blue glow whereas solar sun jars give off an orange color. Another fun addition to any evening alfresco is the solar colour changing drinks coaster which lights up when you place a glass on it and thus throws color changing light up through your drink.

Solar deck lights and solar patio lights can be a good solution if your deck or patio already exists since you won’t need to take it apart or dig parts of it up in order to lay the cables that would otherwise be necessary. You can also fit solar post lights and solar wall lights to raise the lighting off the floor so to speak. Solar patio lights cover a range of different types of outdoor lighting fixtures, but far and away the most commonly used (with good reason) are solar powered lanterns, recessed solar deck lights (in addition to deck post lights), down lights and solar rope lights.

At a more utilitarian level there is also high power solar security lighting which is PIR activated and is therefore able to deliver high intensity light without discharging the battery since the light is only activated by movement and switches off again after a predetermined period of time. This is excellent for low cost solar security lights and solar driveway lights where the cost and effort of laying extensive cabling might otherwise prove prohibitive. And let’s not forget of course solar shed lighting.

How to Install Outdoor Solar Powered Garden Lights

Like any form of lighting the first point to consider is what purpose your outdoor garden lighting is intended to serve. Does it need to be bright to scare off intruders or provide sufficient illumination to work by? Is it functional in the sense that path lighting, for example, is? It is for purely decorative purposes such as bringing the garden to life at night, or for entertaining friends and family?

The answer might of course be any and all of these, in which case you need to address each aspect in its own right then work out how to combine these elements (if necessary – you may want security lighting only at the front of your property and decorative effects only in the back yard).

Functional outdoor solar lighting is probably the easiest to install since the criteria for success are pretty clear. If someone approaches the house does a solar powered flood light switch on? Do the solar path lights make it obvious where the paths and other walkways are so you can move around freely without bumping into things at night?

Outdoor solar lights whose purpose is to enhance entertaining equally don’t require a huge amount of thought – items such as solar fairy lights and sun jars are designed to be used as a bit of fun and add ambience – just sprinkle them about the place informally.

Outdoor garden lighting proper though can be something of an art form, especially if done well. But there’s no reason to be scared off if you’ve never installed outdoor solar power garden lights before. First of all, almost any outdoor garden lighting looks better than none – it really is very difficult to actually make a garden look worse through the use of lighting.

Second, one of the great advantages of outdoor solar lighting is that it is not only very simple to install in the first place, but equally easy to rearrange; so you can experiment with different positions and try out particular effects to your hearts content until you find an arrangement that looks pleasing to you. And that’s a key point – it’s YOUR garden, what anybody else thinks is unimportant.

Whatever you want to achieve with solar powered garden lighting there is always one crucial consideration to keep uppermost: access to light (and preferably sunlight) during the day. In some gardens this is not much of an issue, but if you have a lot of shade from trees or awkward spots to deal with then you need to consider ways to optimise your solar garden lighting.

How to Get the Best from Solar Garden Lighting

When actually in use i.e. in the evening or at night, then solar powered garden lighting is in effect battery powered garden lighting. The solar aspect is obviously only relevant to recharging the batteries used to actually power the lights. This means quite simply that you can have bright solar garden lights or long lasting solar outdoor lights but you can’t have both (without going to some additional effort).

Generally speaking, unless you intend to install a lighting control system so you can switch your outdoor garden lighting on and off at will, you should aim to install solar outdoor lights that last as long as you want the garden to be lit – for most people 4 to 6 hours would easily suffice.

How long a solar outdoor garden light will stay lit is simply a function of the output charging capacity of the solar panel and the capacity of the rechargeable battery(s). This boils down to two elements: the cabability of the battery to accept and hold a charge; and the amount of sunlight it gets. The simplest advice is to use good quality rechargeable batteries, if necessary dumping supplied or simply worn out batteries (in a battery recycling bin)

Clearly then, a key component of solar powered garden lighting is the recharging phase during the hours of daylight (most modern solar garden lamps will recharge without direct sunlight, but as always the brighter the better). You need to ensure that either individual solar garden light units are placed so as to capture good light conditions, or if running sets of solar outdoor lights from separate solar panels, that these are placed in an optimal position. Shade and outdoor solar lighting really don’t mix terribly well…

…but sometimes though you do want to deliberately place outdoor garden lights in shady positions. You can accomplish this using outdoor solar powered garden lights simply by having the light units separate from the solar panel and battery pack. Obviously this involves running low voltage cables, but since these pose no serious hazard it’s quite easy to hide them in amongst foliage or a shallow trench in the ground. Many solar garden light kits are now supplied in this form.

The advantage of using a separate solar panel connected to multiple outdoor solar lights is not just that you can then install solar garden lamps in areas of shade, but that by providing a central point of electrical supply you also enable the possibility to control your solar lighting from a single point. It also provides you the option to add some serious juice to your solar landscape lighting by integrating it with conventional solar lighting that utilises larger solar panels and deep cycle batteries (car batteries are popular) to provide a strong, stable and longer lasting supply of electricity.

If you don’t want to go that far with outside solar garden lights then a useful tip for keeping your outdoor garden lighting looking crisp is to simply occasionally remove the batteries and recharge them using a regular mains battery charger. There’s no reason why solar garden lights shouldn’t give you years of maintenance free, electricity free, enjoyment.