There is no bulb to change with solar powered yard lights.  The light emitter is soldered onto a small circuit board that contains a rechargeable battery assembly.  Their design is relatively simple.  They charge the batteries during the day and the small light discharges the battery slowly through the evening hours.  Notice I didn’t say through the night.  That was the first disappointment.  They discharged rather quickly – to the point that the light completely faded away after a couple of hours.  These yard lights were impressive at first but proved sorely inadequate for any backyard event or family get together.

Solar powered yard lights aren’t exactly as maintenance free as you may have read on the box.  First of all the clear panel that contains the photoelectric cells needs to be cleaned periodically.  Over time they get rather filthy given their design requirement of being horizontally flat to maximize the sun exposure.    I just used plain old Windex ™ and a paper towel.  Not sure but that may have contributed to their demise – as the surface then began to become opaque rather than clear – as they were originally.  Also, I suspect that either the battery mechanism doesn’t have a very long duty cycle or the non-changeable bulb burns out too soon.  We’ll never know which because it’s all together in one unit.  Once it stops working altogether– all you can do is throw it away.  One of the ‘twisting’ components mentioned earlier is a spherical reflective (aluminum looking) piece that exaggerates the meager light put off by that small bulb.  That too gets dusty and dirty over time, and it’s impossible to remove it without disassembling everything either.  Suffice to say, my disappointment in these yard lights grew over time.

For the past couple of years I’ve used wired electrical yard lights.  They certainly don’t suffer that gradual fade effect as do the solar powered and they also use replaceable bulbs.  The result is that they’re much brighter, last all night, and generally require less maintenance.  I did have to replace a few of the units though.  Aged molded plastic is no match for a novice user of a gas powered weed eater I found.  I did manage to find comparable electric yard lights and added a few more.  If you decide to get the electric yard lights take some extra time to devote to burying the wiring real well.  The lights are daisy chained so it’s best to do all the placement first before burying the wiring too.  Otherwise you’ll be burying and reburying the wire right next to the one you’re placing.  Another one of those ‘found out the hard way’ lessons I’ve learned.  Also, with electric yard lights you really need to pick a brand that’s established whereby parts are readily available.