Lighting yard with no mains power

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zoon

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I’m fed up of the dark! I need to light my yard but have no mains power. The horses have access to the yard all the time as their track joins on to it, so I don’t want lights with a sensor. I’ll need 3 lights - outside in 2 places and 1 inside. I’d like to switch them on and off with a remote ideally as one of my horses has a history of playing with switches and I don’t want him turning the lights on and draining the power. Also that’ll disturb the neighbours who are very nice so I don’t want them annoyed by my lights in the middle of the night! I have a roof I can put solar panels on, but I’m concerned I won’t have power if we have snow or very overcast weather. Ideally I’d want a battery back up. I have zero idea what I need to buy and how to wire it all up. Can anyone help?
 
I’ve been looking at options at the moment as I’m currently purchasing some land.

It probably depends on what sort of budget you are thinking but I want to make my life easy and also have reliable power.

I’m going to hopefully install a complete off grid solar system. Essentially the large field shelter will have decent set of solar panels. Power is stored in a battery system and electrics all wired up. Will run electric fence, lighting, cctv all year round hopefully. There is option for having a back up generator that links to the battery and charges it in very bad weather

Downside is costs 9k
 
We have a car battery in the feed room which gets rotated with one charged at home every week. That's wired to lights.

OH has a background in electrics so did it for me but if you ask around you might find someone who can set it up for you.

I do have some solar lights with on / off switches but they're a bit weak at this time of year.
 
We have solar lights. One panel on the roof wired to battery through a gizmo (I can never remember what it's called) the gizmo prevents the battery overcharging. This powers 14 LED lights and the electric fence. It's been in use for years and to date has never gone down. The key is a big enough battery to cover for several days in the event of a problem. Brilliant system. If you are worried about switches, you could always put it in a little box with a door that you can bolt to keep your horse away.
 
I have just been through this. I bought one of these battery packs and a couple of floodlights (will attach pics), working very well so far, can take it home to charge but I'm planning on adding a solar panel to it in the spring.
 

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There is a company called light my ride. Im looking at lighting for a field shelter and they have options. Not used them yet so can not review but something to look at maybe.
 
HorseMaid said:
I have just been through this. I bought one of these battery packs and a couple of floodlights (will attach pics), working very well so far, can take it home to charge but I'm planning on adding a solar panel to it in the spring.
Click to expand...
I have 3 similiar to these bought from Screwfix. I can move them around the yard and position wherever needed. They charge overnight but l tend to always make sure one is charging, there’s a dial on mine that indicates the level of battery life. As the positioning is flexible it’s really easy to light up an area if you need to look at something more closely.
 
I have a leisure battery that has a large solar panel to keep it topped up attached. In the shed there is an inverter attached to it too, and both internal and external lights run off this with on/off switches for either. Everything off ebay
 
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