Solar garden lights cost just a few dollars each and are an inexpensive solution for lighting at night — and they may just give you a useful piece of equipment to complete a technical project.

Whether you’re looking for a rechargeable battery, an LED, or even a solar panel, these devices contain a host of retrofittable components. Perhaps you are looking for a way to power your watch, harvest energy for another type of light, or even plan to simply recharge your batteries using sunlight.

With one or more solar lights, you can achieve all of this, but please note that the power on these devices is too low to charge a mobile phone or tablet.

Benefits of solar energy

There are obvious benefits to solar energy; even when the sun is behind light clouds, there is some conversion of energy (although thicker clouds heralding rain will end any energy generation). Over the years, solar energy has become increasingly popular as a means of powering central heating, street lighting, and signage, and various industrial solar power plants have been installed in North America and Europe. Satellites often use solar panels to power their equipment (although some military satellites in orbit use other power sources).

As a clean method of generating electricity and heat, solar energy has proven to be extremely popular as an alternative to fossil fuels. The only real drawback is the unreliability of the weather!

garden mopping solar lamp

In order to get your hands on the components inside the garden solar lamp, you will need:

• Flat screwdriver.
• Wire cutters.
• digital / analog multimeter (for testing).
• Optional hand drill / cutter / grinder, e.g. from Dremel.

By disassembling the solar lamp and breaking it into its component parts, you will find an LED, a rechargeable battery (usually AAA), a few wires and a photoresistor in the circuit.