Solar-Powered Lamps?

[MKandtheforce]

Hi all! I've got a date that my coop should be set, and now I'm down into the nitty-gritty. I'm thinking about installing a heat lamp, to hopefully keep my [future] girls laying through the winter. I'm really interested in the idea of using a solar panel to power it-- it wouldn't require anything too massive (I hope!), since I'd only want to turn the light on for the daylight hours and possibly use a water heater.

Thing is, I know very little about solar power. Is it relatively simple to set up a sort of system like this? Or is it a lot more difficult/expensive than I think it is? Should I just give up on this idea altogether?

Thanks all!

 

[scali1971]

I get eggs in the winter and I am in oklahoma so we have all kinds of crazy weather

 

[boothin]

A solar panel to power a heat lamp would definitely need to be pretty large. For a solar panel that can run a 100 watt light bulb, it would be around 4ft by 2ft and would need to follow the sun to keep the sun shining straight onto it to keep up its power output.