Mobile Tower Lighting: Solar vs Diesel
Date: 12/01/26
With the dark mornings and early sunsets through the winter and early spring, it is essential that you light your site, for the safety of all workers and visitors, for productivity beyond daylight hours and for security overnight.
It’s also mandatory under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.
Yet with so many site lighting options available, from traditional diesel-powered mobile tower lighting to modern, emission-free solar tower lights, how do you choose the best lighting set-up for your site?
In this article, we’ll demonstrate the multiple benefits of choosing solar powered mobile tower lighting from Think Hire and show how it can save you money and help you to meet your environmental goals, while still creating a safe site environment for your team.
1. The Financial Impact: No Running Costs
With rising diesel costs, combined with the ban on red diesel on construction sites, the cost of running a standard diesel generator to power your mobile tower lighting can be significant. Think Hire solar lighting has no running costs, because it gets its energy free from built in solar panels.
Our solar portable tower lights use 100% free solar power, harvested during the day, to deliver 8hours of lighting through the night, seven days a week in spring, summer and autumn, and five days a week even in winter.
2. Environmental Footprint: No CO2 Emissions
Whether you are working to comply with compulsory emissions laws, such as those in inner cities, or simply trying to support your own company’s Net Zero targets, solar powered site lighting is a must. While diesel generators produce CO2 and NOx, along with other greenhouse gases, solar panels are emission free, creating a cleaner, greener site, day and night.
3. Silent running: No Noise Pollution
One of the biggest issues with diesel powered mobile tower lighting is the noise of the generator. Often, the lights will run all night, causing a nuisance in residential areas and creating problems for your site with the local community. Solar powered tower lights run silently throughout the night, drawing power from the battery that has been charging just as quietly all day. Solar powered portable tower lights create no noise pollution.
4. Flexible and Dependable: No Wiring or Maintenance Requirements
Planning site lighting can be a complex and costly project. Linking to the mains supply involves extensive wiring, limiting the flexibility of your system, while running multiple generators at source not only involves costs, noise and pollution, but also requires regular maintenance and repair. Neglect this maintenance, and your diesel generator will break down, your lighting will fail, and your work will stop.
Solar powered mobile tower lighting can be deployed almost anywhere on site, with no wiring and no generator required. This makes solar lighting incredibly versatile for evolving projects such as housing estates. What’s more, because there are no moving parts, there is far less maintenance and a much lower risk of breakdowns.
The Verdict: Why Choose Solar Site Lighting?
When you bring all these benefits together, the case for solar-powered portable site lighting is hard to argue against:
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No operating costs
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No emissions
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No noise pollution
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No wiring
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No maintenance
With modern, efficient, effective solar technology so easily available, providing powerful LED lighting, those dirty, noisy, diesel generators really are a relic of the past. They’re a bad habit that your site really needs to break if you want to operate more cleanly and cost-effectively.
Make the Right Choice with Your Light Choice
If you want to save on everything from operating costs to emissions, noise to maintenance, you need to make the right choice with your portable tower lighting. To find out more about solar-powered mobile tower lighting from Think Hire, as well as the rest of our environmentally-friendly site lighting range, get in touch with our expert team today.
Frequently Asked Questions
A. Yes. Modern solar-powered tower lights use high-intensity LEDs that match or exceed the light produced by the metal halide bulbs used in traditional diesel-powered tower lights.
A. Think Hire solar-powered tower lights provide up to eight hours a day, seven days a week in spring, summer and autumn, and still deliver eight hours of lighting five days a week in winter. They do not need direct sunshine and will generate power even on cloudy days.
A. Over the whole of the hire, solar site lighting will always be the cheaper option. The initial hire cost of solar site lighting may be a little more than diesel lighting, but you will save much more than this in operating costs, since you do not need expensive diesel fuel to run them.
A. Yes. Once charged outside, solar-powered tower lights can be deployed anywhere you need them. They are particularly suited to indoor use in enclosed spaces, as they do not produce fumes or noise pollution.
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We have over 60 years combined experience in the design, manufacture, hire and sale of innovative products, with an environmentally considerate power supply.