At the KPN Meetup Bullseye brought up a great point about the Solar Landscaping Lights that you can purchase. These are great for cheap lighting at night for your sidewalks, gardens, placed around your property for a little night light or added security. They are basically maintenance free and require no cables or cords to power them.The cool thing about them is that they have small solar cells on top of them that draw their power from the sun during the day. For night use the power is stored in a standard rechargeable AA battery. Some of these lights have two batteries in them and those are the bigger ones. If you have a stock of rechargeable batteries (which you should) you can purchase solar chargers for pretty cheap. But the landscaping lights can be dual purpose. Light at night, and charged batteries when you need them.
These lights are pretty cheap and you could make a "garden" of solar lights just for charging your batteries. You can get a 10-pack from Amazon for around $30.00. That's not bad considering you could charge at least 1 battery per light (I'm not sure if these will do 1 or 2). This would eliminate the need for an at home solar charging option. It would still be a good idea to have a portable solar charging unit for your batteries but for home use these are perfect.
