How about these right… I think you’ll find the following nuggets of wisdom particularly insightful. Leave your comments below. Check out the second one in particular…

Downtown lights up for holidays

Kids stood with outreached hands as decorative floats draped with Christmas lights passed by. Occupants smiled and waved to entertain the crowd. … Read More…

More Holiday Lights Go Up

The Rydls had just enjoyed a free carriage ride around downtown Papillion, after watching hundreds of Christmas lights turn on. “They lit it up, … Read More…

Christmas Village lights up Ogden

Sure, Christmas songs are on the radio, trees and tinsel are in stores, and Christmas lights have been up since before the snow came. … Read More…
That’s all the news for today guys, so until next time, thanks for stopping by.

Here is an exciting development in environmentally friendly holiday decorations: solar Christmas lights! They are a combination of LED Christmas lights and a solar panel, with a rechargeable battery to store the energy from the sun to be used at night. As LED lights and solar panels have both become less expensive, solar string lights have become practical and affordable. They also allow you to decorate for the holidays without increasing your carbon footprint or adding to your electricity bill. As such, they have appeal whether you are concerned about the environment, your pocketbook, or both.

In addition, solar powered lights have the advantage of being easier to set up than plug-in Christmas lights. Let’s say that you have a fence that you’d like to decorate with lights. Unfortunately, your house is set far back from the fence, so any electrical outlets that you could use are far away. With plug in lights, you could either run a long, ugly extension cord back to an outlet, or just give up and decide to put the lights somewhere else. Solar lights solve this problem, because there is no need to find an outlet! As long as you make sure that the attached solar panel will get some sun, you can set the lights up wherever you want.

Let’s take a look at how these lights work. While the sun is up, a photovoltaic panel collects solar energy and stores it in a rechargeable battery. At nightfall, the battery stops charging and the lights come on automatically. The lights stay on until the battery runs out of power, or until sunrise, whichever comes first. Even on a rainy, snowy, or overcast day, when the battery may not receive as much energy, it should still enable the lights to run for at least an hour or two. This is because the LED lights used in solar Christmas lights are extremely efficient, using about 8 times less energy than comparable incandescent bulbs. It is the efficiency of LED lights that makes solar powered lights practical, and allows them to run even on a small amount of power collected from the sun.

For all of these reasons, making solar Christmas lights a part of your holiday decorations is a bright idea. Besides, they don’t cost you a cent to run once you’ve invested in them, so why not leave them up year round? Solar string lights aren’t just for Christmas any more!

Jeff Yin is a scientist and a strong advocate for the development of technology that enables people to more easily use renewable energy and increase their energy efficiency. To this end, he has launched the blog Solar Lights Advisor, as well as a blog devoted to solar Christmas lights, just in time for the holidays!

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