Here’s a brilliant idea for the holidays: solar Christmas lights!  This relatively new development in environmentally friendly holiday decorations comes from the marriage of LED Christmas lights with a solar panel.  The convergence of decreasing costs for both LED lights and solar technology has made solar string lights affordable.  Now, you can light up your house for Christmas (or at any other time) without burning any fossil fuels or increasing your electricity bill.  You can capture the power of the sun, and delight your neighbors by using it to light up the night in your choice of colors.

Here is how these lights work:  During the day, a small solar panel collects energy from the sun and stores it in a rechargeable battery.  Once the sun goes down, a sensor tells the unit to stop charging the battery and to turn the lights on.  The lights will then glow until the battery runs out of juice, or until the sun comes up, whichever comes first.  This works even if the day is rainy, snowy, or overcast; the battery may not charge as fully on a cloudy day, but the solar panel should still provide enough energy for the lights to run for a while.  Keep in mind that solar lights work best when mounted outside, because you will get less power from the sun if the sunlight has to pass through a window before hitting the solar panel.

One of the keys to the development of solar string lights is the decreasing cost of LED lights.  LED lights have the major advantage that they use about 8 times less energy than regular incandescent lights, allowing them to run for a much longer time on a small amount of solar energy than their incandescent counterparts.  Imagine if you tried to run a set of regular Christmas lights using solar power…they wouldn’t last very long!  The efficiency of LED lights makes solar powered lights practical, and, as LED lights continue to decrease in price, actually affordable.

Using solar powered lights provides two major advantages over regular Christmas lights: First, you don’t need to worry about finding an outlet or running extension cords to the places you want to have your lights…you can put them anywhere that will get a bit of sun!  Second, once you buy a set, you’ll never need to pay another cent for the electricity that you use to run them.  Once you’ve made your investment, you can enjoy them without worrying about running up your electricity bill!

Given these advantages, why not consider getting solar string lights to light up your holiday decorations this year?