Solar lights can be found primarily in landscapes, around ponds, along sidewalks or walkways to the house. In fact, solar lights have been around for some time and have faded into favor and out again among the public. One of the reasons solar lights have been removed from most landscaped areas is due to the low quality of light and the short period of time they could provide lighting, dim as it may have been.
However, times have changed and solar lights are making a resurgence in gardens, in well landscaped areas, on light posts and as decorative lanterns. Solar lights today have significantly improved over their ancestors.
Early Solar Lights
The earliest solar lights were used as small landscaping lights. They generally had a very small area of solar cells and small batteries that could collect sufficient energy to produce low level lights for a period of time that lasts a few hours. Most batteries used for solar lighting are D batteries and as such could only offer dim diffused lighting.
Solar Lights Now
Today, while solar lights are far from where we would wish them to be, there have been improvements that now allow the use of solar lights on decks, as streetlamps, and a variety of landscape uses, as well as a general use around the exterior of many houses.
If there is one thing that holds true when it comes to the purchase of exterior solar lights it is that you get what you pay for. While many of us still think of solar lights as those we purchase from the local discount store and stab into the ground to light the path of the sidewalk to the house, the use of solar lights has greatly expanded.
Due to the current use of LED lights, the brightness has improved and with improvement in solar cells over the past several years and increased battery capacity solar lights can last throughout the night, no longer reminding us of the shadowy lights of a fading flashlight.
The technology of the new solar LED lights allow a twelve hour span of lighting equivalent to a a 20 watt lamp. This technology will continue to improve as the demand for solar lights has increased recently with emphasis now being placed on “green” energy. The sun is the is perhaps our greatest source of renewable energy and as such, over the coming years we can expect to see an exponential increase in development of solar capabilities.
