My family lives in a neighborhood that was built in the early 1950’s and evidently there were no laws forcing developers to include streetlights in these areas. So over the years, no doubt after much kvetching, the utilities company has retro-fitted a lot of these neighborhoods (not ours, mind you) with streetlights but with minimal coverage. When we initially moved into the neighborhood, I looked into what it would take to get additional streetlights installed by the city (and without giving you the long and sorted story) it is very expensive (something like $3,400 dollars per light and an annual upkeep fee of $100) and there’s a long wait (average three year waiting list).

So I have opted for the other route — lighting up my house and landscape with low cost and energy efficient lights. What I have found is the solar lights can be a hit-or-miss venture depending on the attached panel and battery technology. But what I have found is the LED landscape lights itself is much more efficient compared to halogen.

Halogen technology creates light as a bi-product of heat. This lighting process causes damage to the components of the lights which causes them to “burn-out” very quickly. Additionally, because halogen lights must create heat to produce light they require a lot of energy. A LED lamp uses approximately 90% less energy than a halogen lamp so utility costs will be lower and they last 50 times as long as halogen bulbs. So even if you get a non-solar LED system they will be rated closer to a night light rather than a refrigerator when it comes to how much wattage it is drawing annually.