RANT - Solar Power Failure

i have been an environmentalist for many years - recycling, composting, organic gardening, etc....i would also love to switch our outdoor lighting to solar- too bad it's nearly useless! Had low voltage lighting for years, and bought the cheap sets of plastic lights, but they worked well for years. The sun finally got to the plastic, though, and they got too brittle (i thought plastic takes hundreds of years to break down - why does it only take FIVE for mine?)* i had used solar lights many years before, i knew at the time they did not throw much light and did not work well during the winter months, but during the past couple of years, we could hardly find low voltage lights to replace ours - they were all solar! So, i (erroneously) assumed that solar lighting must work a lot better these days, since they have all but replaced LV in the stores. Uhhhh..no.

We purchased quite a few of them last year (it was late spring, when the days were longer), and they were OK during the summer, but when the nights got longer, they were even WORSE than I remember! They didn't light at ALL on cloudy days, which is about all our winters consist of, plus they were a copper colored metal, (which is why i chose them), and the color faded within 3 months! I did write the company (Westinghouse, which i thought should have good quality items), they just told me to send them back with the box, which i did not have after almost a year. Don't get me wrong, for little accent lights here and there with no real purpose (security, safety), they're cute, but we don't have street lights, and it is very dark in my neighborhood - we all have post lights and landscape lights, but when my lights go out at 2 AM or don't come on at all, it doesn't do any good!..i DO like the floating solars, though!...

Anyway, we did finally find some LV lights, scattered the solars here and there in the garden, and all is well with the world...

* Just being funny- i know plastic breaks down in sunlight, and not in a landfill because it's buried and light doesn't get to it!