Comments on: Solar Lights?

By: Mark H

Mark H — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 11:42:59 +0000

Like most here, forget solar panels, as too expensive, and inexpensive solar lights are too weak for growing anything. What you need are fluorescent tubes that are speciallly designed for growing plants.
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By: bookworm

bookworm — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 10:58:59 +0000

The solar panels and bulbs draw off the daylight/sunlight and that is stored for night/darkness. Don’t forget the little garden lights also use batteries – weird I know.
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By: DarkSide

DarkSide — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 10:52:59 +0000

Forget the solar lights. they use solar panel that recharges a group of rechargeable battery's. Which will be astronomical expensive to use for your project. Even if you use simple car batteries. less you are talking really small green house. And then the solar panels themselves will be to costly. Just get a 110 volt photo cell controlled outdoor lighting control box or extension cord. They are not expensive and easy to obtain at any hardware store. Now if your talking something on the scale of a desk? Then go to wal-mart and buy a solar battery charger. And a cheep and small car or lawn mower battery. You can find them at the automotive and camping accessories department. Perhaps 20.00 $ for solar battery charger.Approx 14 amp. And 35 49$ for battery. This should get you going on the road to success. Make sure you use 12 volt florescent shop light or there wont be enough amp hours to last all night.
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By: aiownk

aiownk — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 10:21:59 +0000

I would count out the landscaping solar lights. The kind of lights you probably will want are more powerful – that will keep a constant light on your plants all night long.

What you need to do is find lights (regular lights) that will work for your plants and then design a solar panel & battery setup to run them off of. I did this with shop lights in my horse barn – used a solar panel that I placed on the roof of the barn and ran the wires from the panel to a controller (to make sure the battery didn’t ‘uncharge’ when the sun wasn’t shining) to the battery (and this had to be a deep-cycle marine battery) to an inverter (so I could turn on/off the lights) to the lights.

You can find better/more detailed instructions practically anywhere on the web – just look up DIY solar panel connections.

And then you’ll need some sort of automatic switch for the lights to automatically turn on when it becomes dusk. I think I would use a timer, that way you aren’t waiting for it to be totally dark when the lights turn on, but you can set it to turn on when it starts getting dark.
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By: BettyBoopGirl

BettyBoopGirl — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 09:37:59 +0000

Solar lights are powered by the sun…
So no sun, no solar light that night..
Once the sun charges them what happens is
when the sun disappears your solar lights
turn on… I love them…
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