Residential outdoor lighting is a billion dollar a year industryin the United States. It is getting so popular, there is now acorporation that franchises individual businesses dealing onlyin exterior landscape lighting design, supply, and installation!Line voltage systems used to be the only option for outdoorlighting but in recent years, low voltage lighting systems andsolar powered lights have made exterior decorative lightingavailable to every home owner -not just the rich ones.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 67% of adult Americans arehomeowners (2004 statistics). Renovation, remodeling and homeimprovement are massively popular activities that only reflectthe priority that consumers give in making their property ascomfortable and pleasing as possible. Gardening has always beena past time homeowners enjoy in beautifying their property, bothfor themselves and to raise the "curb appeal", but up until adecade ago, beautifying the nightscape was not a mainstreamidea.

Hotels, resorts and similar type commercial properties havealways used light to create beautiful atmospheres on theirgrounds, but given the cost of an outdoor lighting system,residential lighting applications were mostly limited to basicsecurity needs. Landscapes were enjoyed during daylight hoursbut when the sun went down, the outdoor portion of a homeowner'sproperty was not used.

Low Voltage outdoor lighting systems

Low voltage lighting systems and solar powered lights arechanging this. A low voltage lighting system plugs into atransformer and takes household current down to 12 volts. Thismeans real energy efficiency and eliminates the building coderequirements for burying cables 18 inches for line voltagesystems. The lights can be used for any outdoor lightingapplication, although they still need to be wired together.Trenching and some cable burying will also probably be required.Additionally, the capacity of the transformer must be sufficientto cover the combined power draw (watts) of every light in thesystem.

The Solar landscape lighting option

Solar powered lights are not wired to anything and require notransformers. Installing them is as easy as sticking them in theground, or mounting them wherever you need them. The draw backis that the photovoltaic charging panels (usually mounted on thetop of the light fixture) that capture the sun's energy needdirect sunlight during the day to charge the batteries thatprovide power to illuminate the light at night. And in higherlatitudes where the period of darkness is longer in wintermonths, there is a good chance that the lights will not getenough sun during the day to be able to illuminate for theentire period of darkness.

Even so, solar powered landscaping lights are becoming extremelypopular although this was not always the case. Up until two orthree years ago, solar lights were not as bright as manyconsumers wanted, didn't illuminate for long periods and toooften, did not operate longer than a year or two before becomingdefective. Today however, solar lights are bright enough foralmost any outdoor application, will illuminate for the entirenight and -provided you

get quality models - will last 20 yearswithout maintenance or defect.

These dramatic increases in solar outdoor lighting reliabilityare due to recent advances in two areas of technology:photovoltaic cells and the introduction of the Light EmittingDiode (LED) bulb.

The photovoltaic cell is the technology that "captures" thesun's energy. In the 1980's, these cells could absorb only about5% of the sunlight they were exposed to. Today this figure ismoving past 15% and as further development of the compounds usedin these cells continues (they are now silicon based but othercompounds are being studied) they will only get more efficient.

Perhaps even more exciting has been the introduction of thesolid state LED bulb. This technology involves manipulatingelectrons and moving them in a certain direction so that photonsare produced. This creation of photons is the visible light.Unlike the traditional incandescent bulb, there is no excitedgas, no burning filament, and therefore next to no heatproduction. Almost all of the energy produced is used as light.The bulbs last for 10,000 hours, require no maintenance and drawon average only three to five watts.

Today's solar lights are excellent value

One of the biggest critiques of solar lights in the past hasbeen the intensity of brightness they produce. This was a faircomment, but today's solar lights are much brighter. Manymistake the term watt as a measure of brightness, which ofcourse, it is not.

A watt is the measurement of the power required to operatesomething. If talking about only one type of light bulb, thenthere is a relationship; a 40w incandescent bulb will not be asbright as a 60w bulb. But when dealing with differenttechnologies, this comparison is not fair. Indeed, one LED bulbdrawing between three and five watts will produce the samebrightness as a 40w bulb. And many solar lights are nowmanufactured with multiple LEDs, therefore producing light muchbrighter than the glow of a traditional 40w incandescent product.

More and more consumers are realizing that outdoor accentlighting really does have an enormous effect in creating abeautiful nightscape environment. Some prefer a low voltagelighting system because they will illuminate for the entireperiod of darkness and are reliable and energy efficient. Otherconsumers prefer the solar outdoor lighting solution becausethese lights are now just as reliable, are far easier to installand can be moved around at whim when trying different effects.There is also a satisfaction in getting free energy from thesun! But whatever the choice, there is no denying thatresidential outdoor lighting systems are becoming a standardfeature on millions of properties.

About the author:

Kavar Peter is a successful freelance writer with a stronginterest in renewable energy issues. He writes regularly aboutsolar poweredproducts including garden lighting and pathway lighting solutions. Copyright Kavar Peter 2005