One Light for Everything

Most solar lights die twice. First the battery goes, then the whole lamp follows — because the two are glued into one and cannot part ways. We wanted to build the opposite: a light you get to keep.

The answer is the SOMO, now in its sixth generation. Not a built-in part but a module with a life of its own: solar cell, battery and light in one unit that lifts out, tops up and swaps over. The jar stays a jar. The carafe stays a carafe. Only the heart is made to be changed.

Every number on the spec sheet is a decision. 100 lumens, because that is enough to read by without turning the evening into daytime. Warm white at 3000 kelvin with a CRI above 80, so faces and wooden tables look like campfire, not office. Dimmable in steps, because light is rarely needed at full tilt: one charge runs 5 hours at full brightness, 28 on the middle setting, up to 100 on low.

The day/night sensor switches the module on at dusk and off at dawn — nobody has to remember it. It charges on sunshine, and when the week stays grey, on USB-C. And because this light lives outdoors, it is IP65-rated against dust and water jets.

The SOMO is built where all our products are: at the Fair-Trade-certified factory at Victoria Yards, Johannesburg — by people who learned soldering, electronics assembly and robotics here, in a factory that runs almost entirely on solar power.

A light that swaps out instead of being glued in has consequences beyond its own housing: the Sonnenglas is the world's only solar light to carry the Blue Angel certification. We read that as an assignment, not a trophy.

One module, many lives: in the morning the SOMO sits in the jar on the balcony, on the weekend it rides the Adventure Mount in a tent, the evening after it glows in the Light Carafe on the dinner table. When the battery tires one day, the module changes — not the product.

The unit is small; the sentence behind it is short: one light powers everything. The rest is glass, fabric and occasion.