Solar christmas lights
Lisa Laprade
Since these inventions, solar powered gadgets have been popping up from coast to coast. From radios and remote controlled cars, to exterior illumination, including Christmas lights.
Solar powered Christmas lights have lots of positive features, but also quite a few negative.
The biggest negative attribute is the fact that, for most of the country, the days are much shorter in the colder months, not allowing very much sunlight to power the lights. If we could start celebrating Christmas in July, at least in the northern part of the country, the lights would be much more effective. If you are lucky enough to live in a state where the sunny days of winter are longer than in the northern territory, keep in mind that the lights need at least eight hours of sunlight to power up properly, with at least three of these hours being direct sunlight. Make sure that you will be putting these lights up in a sunny exterior part of your home. If direct sunlight only hits the back of your home, you may want to consider a different alternative to solar powered Christmas lights.
The lights themselves tend to not be as bright as classic Christmas lights. The wattage use of Christmas lights is designed to use much less power, so they use a much more efficient light bulb. The light that this sort of bulb produces is more like a fluorescent bulb than a regular, screw in light bulb. Therefore the lights tend to have a light bluish haze around them. This is true for all solar lighting, including those connected to ground stakes which are commonly used in landscaping.
The average cost of solar powered Christmas lights is about $35 for forty feet of lighting. This is a bit more expensive than traditional lighting, but it will not cost you a dime to power them. The prices are dropping every year with the constantly evolving solar power industry.
The longevity of the bulbs has been relatively good. As long as you take very good care not to damage the solar panels or bulbs themselves, solar powered Christmas lights should last you at least three to five years. This is also a positive attribute, as the average life span for a regular set of Christmas lights is usually a season or two.
Common uses for solar powered Christmas lights include outlining doorways and windows. This is really the best use because the sunlight reflects off of the glass on windows and doors to give a bit of extra power to the lights. It is not recommended that you put solar powered lights in trees or anywhere else that direct sunlight can easily be blocked. Decorating the bushes in the front of your house should be left, at this time anyway, to the old fashioned outlet Christmas lights.
