Have you ever thought about the wonder of having paths through your garden, or around your house, totally lit up at night – and you know it’s not running up your electric bill?

Convenience – The convenience of solar garden lights stems from the fact that they do not require any special wiring. Think of the freedom it gives you to know you can just stick the stake in the dirt, or attach the light itself to any side of the house, as long as it is in direct sunlight during the day.

Technologically Advanced- You can have a power source that makes its own energy with solar powered garden lights, since they absorb the energy from the sun, and then let it off at night in a nice glow.

Initially, when solar lamps were first introduced on the market, they lacked efficiency. The photovoltaic cells weren’t strong enough to reliably hold a charge for more that a few hours. However, with LED technology emerging together with the more efficient NiMH power packs replacing the older NiCAD, modern solar garden lights provide both a stronger light and a longer discharge time than they did in the past.

Contemporary low voltage garden lighting requires just three parts: a 12v transformer to provide a safe low voltage power supply; a cable to distribute the power supply to where it’s needed; and the garden light fittings.

First though it is vital to select which type of lighting (traditional incandescent bulbs or LEDs) and to gauge the rating of the transformer necessary to run the lights (which depends on how bright they are and how many are required).

We will cover the differences between the two types of system (and how to combine them) later, but both otherwise follow exactly the same basic principles.

Calculating the size of transformer required is simply a matter of counting up the wattages for all the actual lights (so, 3 x 10 watt deck lights plus 2 x 20 watt standard lanterns comes to 70 watts for example) and tells you what rating of transformer you need to purchase.

The transformer input is connected to a mains outlet and must therefore be placed inside. The transformer output is then connected to the cable which then leads outdoors.