Harnessing Solar Power Indoors: Can Solar Lights Be Powered by Artificial Lights?

Solar light is one such thing that gets thought about in terms of an outdoor application where sunlight is available for free, basically. But what about indoors? Is it possible to make solar lights work, and can artificial lights power them? This article tries to explain in detail all of these questions and discusses the feasibility of indoor application of solar power.

Can Solar Lights Work Indoors?
Solar lights will capture sunlight through photovoltaic cells, which turn sunlight into electrical energy. Outdoors, these cells just absorb the sunlight, store some energy in batteries, and use that to keep the light going in the dark. But for an indoor setting, things can get a little bit complicated.

Solar lights can work indoors, but their efficiency significantly drops. This is because generally speaking, indoor conditions lack the intensity and duration of sunlight for them to serve their purpose in effectively charging the PV cells. While windows may admit some sunlight, the captured energy is barely enough to keep the lights on for long.

Can Artificial Lights Power Solar Lights?
In theory, artificial sources of light would be able to power solar lights, whether it be incandescent bulbs, LED lights, or even fluorescent lamps. The effectiveness of such a method is very limited, however. Artificial lights are much weaker than sunlight; this also means that the PV cells will receive very little energy from the artificial source. This might eventually not be enough to recharge the batteries inside the solar light and thus may lead to shortened times of operation or dimmed lights.

For instance, a powerful incandescent bulb may turn on a solar light to some degree, but it will never be as effective as direct sunlight. Furthermore, it would be quite impractical for solar lights to continue to be run using artificial light since that is less effective and may even lead to consuming more energy, which defeats the purpose of solar lights being an "eco-friendly" product.

Practical or Not?
Generally speaking, solar lights are inapplicable indoors with the powering by artificial lights being highly impracticable. The eventual output is rather low with possible poor performance by the light. Indoor lighting is best served by traditional electric lights or battery-operated LED lights designed for indoor use.

Conclusion
In indoor situations, though solar lights could be powered technically by artificial lights, the result is really unsatisfactory in most cases. This is because both the energy conversion will be rather inefficient and the general usage of electricity likely to increase, hence it will become impracticable for most indoor applications. It serves best in the outdoors where the direct falling of sunlight can serve them properly.