The Benefits of Solar Garden Lights

Solar powered garden lights are a fantastic way to light your garden at night. Solar lights have come a long way and are now a very practical and dependable option for homeowners looking to improve the look and value of their property. Best of all, these lights can often be found for under $20 a piece depending upon the style or size.

Ideally, the majority of your garden is already receiving a good amount of sunlight for the plants, so it only makes sense to take advantage of the free energy from the sun instead of powering it through your home’s electricity. This benefit can subtract from the initial cost of purchasing the lights over the long term. Most solar lights come with an LED light, which lasts an estimated (for most models) 100,000 hours, or roughly eleven years of constant use, all for free.

Most solar cells can maintain a ten hour battery charge after only six hours of sunlight. As mentioned above, most plants will need at least this each day, and if your lights are adjacent gaining this amount of light should be no problem. As the lighting time, which can be set from dawn to dusk on most models, is almost half a normal day, the ten hour illumination time should be more than enough depending upon where you live.

Aside from the elimination of electrical costs is the complete absence of wiring that comes with installing solar powered lights. Each light provides its own power so there is no need to wire them all together. Installation becomes no more than simply inserting the light fixture into the ground. The one drawback is that all the lights must be timed correctly together in order to turn on in sync. This also reduces the cost of garden lighting since depending on the layout of your property you may need many extra feet of wiring.

The added benefit of no installation is that your plants can grow as they like. Soil and roots are disturbed by being dug up to hide wiring underground. Even if the wiring isn’t hidden, the wires that lay across your lawn can interfere with the vines of certain plants and can be just plain unsightly and distract from the verdant beauty that you worked so hard at. Furthermore if your garden is broken into sections separated by walkways or lawn space, independent solar lights solve the problem of having to lay wire across open space – you don’t have to.

Related Information

Garden Lighting that Provides Security

A Guide to Great Garden Lighting