solar powered lights

I actually have picked up an extra set exactly for that. I don't expect them to do much more than help to light the way home as the ones that I have purchased are designed for yard kind of light. They were pretty cheap ~12$

I used them last year and was not impressed. This year I'm running
regular mini lights and using a DC power pack to run them. The generator will
recharge the power pack at night. Then I will put a timer on the lights so they go on at sunset.
Running lights up your flag pole works well for marking your camp site too.

Somehow that didn't sound right.

We tried a solar generator at Langerado - it powered our string o' 50 lights for about three minutes. We're going to run some more tests before Roo to make sure that user error wasn't a factor, but I'd have a backup if you're depending on having light.

We have some really cheap solar lawn lights that you just stick into the ground. We bought them for $20 for a box of eight at Big Lots awhile back. They do not give off much light, but we use them for marking out our guy lines & stakes to help people avoid them in the dark. Like I said, they are not real bright (one mere led light in them) but they do run for a good six or more hours each night and are reasonably shade-tolerant in charging.

For the purposes of decoration or for marking your stakes & lines so people stay off them, they are fine. For actual light to cook by, not so much.

As for using a solar generator, the trouble here is the cost-per-watt and the amp-hour capacity of your battery. When I sat down and did the math, I figured I would want at least a 60-watt solar panel that was shade-tolerant and not fragile (which means not using the cheaper traditional glass panels) and a 100 amp-hour 12v deep-cycle battery. All said and done, after a charge controller, battery box, etc., I figured it would run at least $500 just for a very basic solar setup that would be able to recharge some nimh lantern batteries, run just two low-watt cfl lights for a couple hours each night, run a couple of the o2cool 10" dc fans, and handle the infrequent use of larger appliances like a dc blender. If I wanted a dc refrigerator (assuming shelling out for a super-high efficiency one, which is like $600 by itself) it would require more solar and a better battery. Calculating your actual solar power generation at different lattitudes, at different times of year, and under different weather conditions gets kinds of complex, then you have to calculate the actual amp-hour usage of your devices per day, etc. etc. DBBKitty's string of 50 lights might be a mere 1 amp hour or more like 10 amp hours, depending on it's voltage and wattage requirements.

In the end, I think most folks are better off using good rechargeable batteries and carrying spares. At least until the nano-capacitors save us all from the horrors of chemical batteries!

Big Lots has a good assortment of solar yard lights right now.

I was thinking of going towards solar powered lights..... until i read this. lol..so I will just do as always and use a lantern/maglights. thx