Best Solar/Battery lighting options for outdoor coop

[MsVexx]

Heya!

Where I live, we are only getting about 12hrs light and that's going to diminish every day as fall and winter set in. I use to get 5-6 eggs a day but lately, I've only been getting 2. They are all healthy, active, and showing no signs of being egg bound, so I'm thinking that they just aren't getting enough light maybe? So I thought I would try some supplemental lighting. I've got them in an outdoor coop that's about 10'W x 14'L, 12'H and electrical power isn't really an option. Do you guys have any suggestions for effective and reliable solar/battery lighting?

 

[imneva]

Following

 

[aart]

Do you guys have any suggestions for effective and reliable solar/battery lighting?

Someone here did it, they had quite the system tho,
adequate collectors and battery storage comes first,
then a timer for a consistent lighting pattern-which is essential.

You might be able to find that thread with a search and a lot of browsing.

 

[MsVexx]

I think I found the perfect solution! I ended up buying this Portable LED Tube Light for $18 and my girls started laying again after a day or two /beeeam. It charges off of a standard USB microSD cable (included w/o wall adapter) and has 5 settings, relevant ones being 100% brightness, 50% brightness, and 23% brightness. Lighting times: 100% = 6H, 50% = 10H, 25% = 22-24H, so it essentially comes equipt with a regulating timer. In my case, the sun rises around 6am and sets around 7pm (getting earlier every day) so they are only getting about 12 hours of decent daylight. They've become accustomed to the long summer days (about 17H,) so I've been trying to wean them down delicately by taking the light out around 3-4pm so it runs out of juice around 9-10pm.

Cool features:
-It's super bright! which comes in handy when walking out to the coop.
-It has magnetic points, one at each end so it will stick to most metals.
-If there is no metal in your coop, it also comes with a little D screw for hanging.
-Price is pretty dang good.

Not so cool features:
-It doesn't like to get wet. on the second night of using this light, it decided to rain pretty hard and some condensation built up inside the light. Thankfully, it decided to work again after letting it dry out for a couple days. I came up with this McGryver solution and plan to test it out over the next few rainy days, so I will let you guys know how that works out.

I'll post pics tomorrow.

 

[3riverschick]

I used Lowes Portofino solar light to mount outside the window and shine inside.
Best,
Karen in western PA

 

[aart]

so it essentially comes equipt with a regulating timer

Hmmm, not really.
You'd need to manually turn it on every day at just the right time,
and hope those duration numbers are correct.