Solar landscape lighting provides a practical alternative to installing more traditional landscape lighting. Traditional landscape lighting requires wires to be run and an outlet to be available in order to plug in the transformer. Usually these wires will need to be buried. This can greatly add to the time and cost of installing traditional landscape lighting.

Outdoor solar lights usually consist of a small photovoltaic cell which charges a battery during the day that is part of the light. Solar lights also have a small photoelectric sensor which will turn on the light at night. Since each light is a self-contained unit, no wiring is needed.

So what makes one solar landscape light better than another? More expensive solar lights will be made from metal, while the cheaper ones are made from plastic. Cheaper solar lights will use lead acid batteries. These batteries have a much shorter life expectancy than the newer and more expensive nickel cadium or nickel metal hydride batteries. Less expensive solar lights may also use incandescent bulbs instead of the more efficient and longer lasting LED lights.

Another important thing to consider before purchasing your solar lights is where each light is going to be placed in your garden and the amount of direct sunlight each light location will receive. In order for the battery to recharge fully each day, the photovoltaic panel must receive several hours of direct sunlight. This is not to say that a light placed in a shady area will not work at all, it just will not remain on as long as fully charged light will stay on. This is usually about 8 to 10 hours.

To get around this problem, some solar lights come with a detachable solar panel that can be placed a short distance from the light base in direct sunlight.

The final thing to consider is that the lighting will not be as bright as traditional wired lighting nor will it probably stay on for the full night during the 14 or 15 hours of darkness during the Winter.

Before purchasing any solar lights, make sure that replacement batteries are available. If the solar lights are using LED lights you should not have to worry about replacing the light since these types of lights last for tens of thousands of hours.

Solar landscape lights are widely available, reasonably priced, require virtually no maintenance and can make a dramatic impact to any landscaping project.

Additional Resources

Solar Electric Panels (PV Panels)