Signs are everywhere, whether it’s a business sign on a store front, a neighborhood sign at the entrance of a housing development, or a welcome sign when entering a city.  Thousands of dollars can be invested into the design, manufacturing, and installation of a sign, to then realize it needs to be illuminated.  But quite often it will be determined that there is no near-by power source available.

In this case there are three options:

1. Do not light up the sign, leaving it in darkness and unseen by passersby during the night hours. 

2. Find a mains power source, and possibly spend tens of thousands of dollars trenching and running cables to the sign. Also take into account for possible permitting, the installation of a meter and the monthly fees associated with it.

3. To use a solar powered lighting system. That’s where we come in!


When it comes to lighting a sign with solar, we can approach it in two ways. We can supply our light fixtures along with the necessary equipment such as a solar panel, batteries, charge controller, and battery enclosure. Or, if you have LEDs already installed in or on the sign, or have a specific light fixture you want to use, we can just supply the solar system to power them. We just need to know the power consumption of the lights, and how long you want them on for each night. This could be dusk to dawn, or for anywhere between 1 to 16 hours.

When powering your LEDs or light fixture, it’s important to keep in mind that these lights are going to be powered by a solar system, and not mains powered electricity. 100 Watts doesn’t sound like a lot of power for a light fixture connected to mains power, but in terms of solar that’s a lot! Especially if it’s installed somewhere like upstate New York which has poor sun levels during the winter months and 15 hour nights in December! Power consumption has to be kept to a minimum in order to keep the cost of the system as low as possible. Most of our lights range between 3 and 30 Watts. You’d be surprised what a 3 Watt light is capable of illuminating!

The sign shown in the pictures is illuminated using 3 lights that our customer had already purchased. We provided our solar system to power their lamps which consumed a total of 18 Watts. Powering them from dusk to dawn in Nebraska was no problem, resulting in an affordable price and a manageable sized power system.

Our systems can be supplied to illuminate from dusk to dawn, or a certain amount of hours each night. The illumination period can be split in two periods such as dusk to x hours, and then x hours before sunrise. We specifically design the system for the weather conditions and night durations in your location. We’ll base the specifications around the worst time of the year, which for the Northern hemisphere is December, when the sun levels are the lowest and the nights are longest. When sizing our systems based on the worst case scenario, you be assured that our systems will work as expected throughout the entire year.

If you have a sign that needs illuminating, using your own light fixtures or ours reach out to us. We’ll help with determining the best option for you!