Outdoor Solar Lighting Solutions
Last Updated: Feb 9, 2025Adding exterior lighting to your home is one way to add visible curb appeal while also adding a sense of comfort, security, and décor. Coming home on a cold, dark winter night to a home bathed in warm, exterior light is inviting and welcoming. In contrast, a dark home façade can often feel depressing and bleak. However, outdoor lighting is often a significant source of energy inefficiency. This inefficiency leads to an increased carbon footprint of our home and a higher monthly electricity bill. The American Medical Association (AMA) released a report documenting several potential human and environmental problems associated with excessive outdoor lighting.
Fortunately, many companies have begun to develop new outdoor lighting products. These new products incorporate solar energy and LED lighting solutions to offer an energy-efficient solution for exterior home lighting.
Table of Contents
- Benefits of Outdoor Solar Lighting
- Do Solar Powered Lights Require Maintenance?
- What to Look For in the Best Solar Lighting Products
Benefits of Outdoor Solar Lighting
Outdoor solar lighting focuses on placing lights in areas that will illuminate your home's exterior areas while also capturing energy from the sun during the day. Small solar panels are placed on the upper casing of these lighting products, which then charge small batteries incorporated into the design of the light itself. The LED lightbulbs usually use low wattage so that only a few hours of direct sun will be more than enough to power the light throughout the long night hours.
Solar Lighting Uses the Sun's Energy
The most apparent benefit of outdoor solar lighting products is that they pull no energy from the electrical grid. In comparison, a 400-watt incandescent reflector floodlight will most likely be using over three kWh of electricity during a typical eight-hour night. That adds up to 90 kWh of energy a month, which would cost you at least $10 a month to run. This correlates to this one exterior light adding about 110 pounds of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each month since Carbonfund.org estimates that the average CO2 emission per kWh is around 1.2 pounds.
Solar Lighting Frees up Energy for Off-Grid Homes
For off-grid homes or homes that produce a significant amount of their energy from solar panels or other renewable energy technologies, small outdoor solar lights will minimize the energy burden on those household renewable energy systems. Instead of using the energy produced by your rooftop solar panels to light up the exterior of your home at night, separate outdoor solar lighting will allow you to take full advantage of your renewable energy solution for more critical needs such as interior lighting, appliances, refrigerators, and heating and cooling.
How To Install Solar Lighting
Outdoor solar lights require no wiring or cables to be installed, making the installation extremely DIY-friendly.
Do Solar Powered Lights Require Maintenance?
Once you have set up your outdoor lights in a sunny area, they are virtually maintenance-free. They will continue to work even during extended power outages. The rechargeable battery inside these lights recharges during the daylight hours. After several years of use, the only maintenance task might be changing the rechargeable battery that wears down through extended use over the years. If you're in a colder climate, you will want to be mindful of where the lights are installed and consider the effects of snowfall on this type of lighting.
Wide Variety of Solar Lighting Solutions Available
Another benefit of outdoor solar lighting is that there is a wide variety of lighting solutions available. Some are powerful solar security lights and floodlights that activate with motion sensors and provide high lumens. Others can light up your front path or driveway, and still, others are in string format to add ambiance to an outdoor patio or porch. There are outdoor lighting products suitable for every home.
Safety and Security With Solar Lighting
Outdoor solar lighting is an inexpensive way to add to your home's overall security and safety. Outdoor floodlights will automatically turn on at night, discouraging vandals and intruders from approaching your house, even when you are not home. Solar path lights can certainly be helpful when trying to navigate your way home during a cold, icy night.
Tobias Roberts
Tobias runs an agroecology farm and a natural building collective in the mountains of El Salvador. He specializes in earthen construction methods and uses permaculture design methods to integrate structures into the sustainability of the landscape.
