To achieve a “hydrogen economy”, non-polluting H2 producing methods need to be developed. Biological H2 production by using light-dependent fermentative pathways appears to be a good candidate, as it is environment-friendly and inherits theoretically high substrate conversion efficiency. However, the major obstacle of applying photo-fermentation is the high power consumption and high operation cost due to the need of artificial light sources (TL: tungsten lamp). To solve this problem, intermittent illumination by using various light/dark cycle (on/off ratio at a fixed illumination time of 60 min) was applied to avoid excessive illumination for energy saving. The results showed that the best photo-H2 production performance with a Rhodopseudomonas palustris strain occurred at a 30 min light/dark cycle (i.e., 30 min light on and 30 min light off), giving the highest overall H2 production rate (19.83 ml/l/h) and requiring relatively lower power consumption than continual illumination. The maximum H2 content was about 85.1% during the 30 min light/dark cycle. The power consumption was further improved by using an innovative solar-energy-excited optical fiber photobioreactor (SEEOFP). With the best light/dark cycle (30 min/30 min), the power consumption by combining SEEOFP and TL (denoting as SEEOFP/TL) was about 33.3% lower than using external light source alone (TL). In addition, illumination with SEEOFP/TL also gave a higher cumulative H2 production and overall H2 production rate. This study demonstrates that by using optimal light sources (SEEOFP/TL) and light/dark cycle, photo-H2 production can be markedly improved, while the power consumption can be significantly lower.