LED Path Lighting
There are many advantages to having outdoor lighting on your property. Firstly it acts as a powerful deterrent to a potential assailant. A person is far less likely to try and enter a well lit home. External lighting works for your personal safety as well. Walking down your path or driveway at night could be the cause of a trip or a fall, something that could have been avoided if ample lighting had been installed. When you install outside lighting you have two main options: to use either a transformer or solar power. Let's take a look at both of these options and see how LED technology can be successfully applied to both.
LED and solar power: the perfect combination
Led lighting and solar power work very well together. The reason for this is that Light Emitting Diodes require very little electricity to produce a powerful luminance. Also the LED can be powered from Direct Current, the power source that photovoltaic (solar) panels collect. This means that no additional inverter is needed to change the Direct Current to the more commonly used Alternating Current.
Therefore solar powered LED path lighting is able to be a stand-alone system. No wires are needed and this means no disruption to your existing landscape, the path does not need to be excavated and no unsightly wires need to be installed. Solar powered LED path lighting can be placed anywhere, this gives you so much more freedom in terms of design and positioning. All potential dark spots can be covered, you can even install solar lighting into your trees or maybe even your water feature.
Security is a major advantage of the solar powered light. If the area you live in were to have a power cut, this would not affect your external lighting. Solar powered LED path lighting does not rely on any power source other than the sun, so your property will remain lit and secure.
Low voltage external lighting via a transformer
If you wanted to use a transformer for your path lighting or already have one installed, LED technology offers advantages over the traditional halogen bulbs. The first advantage is that you can simply install a lot more of them. Say for example you have a 300-Watt transformer. If you were to have 8 halogen bulbs you would be using 270 watts, this would be your maximum. Switching to LED path lighting will give you the same 8 lights using only 24 Watts of power. So you can potentially install 27 lights with the same 300-Watt transformer.
Beyond the extra illumination, you will be dramatically lowering your energy usage. The LED will use 80% less energy than the halogen bulb. But you must be aware that the LED bulb is currently more expensive than the alternative, so the return on your investment will take several years to see. Luckily, LED path lighting is built to last, so it will still be functioning way beyond its counterpart.
