Solar Electric Fences

Today's solar electric fencing takes advantage of the power from the sun to provide security and animal control in remote locations with little maintenance or attention. As solar technology has advanced, solar powered electric fencing (and solar electric fence chargers) have eliminated the need to run power lines into acreage that otherwise requires no connection to your power grid.

Whether you want to keep your livestock inside or you're intent on keeping varmints outside, there is a wide selection of innovative solar electric fences that is waterproof and less susceptible to damage from lightning.

Solar powered electric fences these days can be solid state with no moving parts to wear out. Highly efficient, these state-of-the-art solar fence chargers are easily capable of gathering and storing enough free power from the sun to operate a solar powered electric fence for up to three weeks in darkened, stormy conditions. There are systems that can charge over 25 miles of wire reliably and with very little maintenance for under four hundred dollars.

Let's consider how electric fences work. This can help you to decide if a solar power portable electric fence will work well in your situation.

We should begin with terminology: what is voltage? Voltage is the delivery medium for electrical current. The current itself (or amperage) is the relevant measurement of that current. Lots of current equals lots of shock. A further specific measurement you may encounter is the joule. A joule is the equivalent of a single watt of power expended in one second.

It may be helpful to think of an electric fence in the same way you'd think of a circuit that was open. Try to imagine live current traveling down a wire unobstructed (or impeded) usually in pulses. Suddenly one of these pulses meets up with a critter, and the current jumps from the wire into the body of the animal and then into the ground, causing a shock to occur.

If a solar powered electric fence has been properly designed and has been built accordingly, it delivers a sharp but harmless short mild shock that will deter an animal. It only takes a few encounters with the fence to convince most livestock that it is unrewarding to push against the wire or to gnaw on it. While the idea of electric fencing may seem, at first consideration, to be bordering on cruelty, the damage it delivers is far less devastating than the trauma of barbed wire.