Street Lighting

Street lighting is one of the largest single expenditure for many cities around the world. Staying up-to-date with new developments and adopting solar lighting technologies dramatically reduces electricity costs and green house emissions. Solar street lighting can be an economically viable option in many applications. Not only in areas where the cost of providing electricity is too expensive, but also in situations where reducing running costs is a priority.

Solar street lights are a judicious choice for parking lots, parks, highways, roads airports, area lighting and many other public, private and military sites. When installing solar street lights, there is no need for excavation to put cables, as power does not depend of the grid. Solar energy is used to charge the self-contained battery during daylight and at night, the power released by the battery powers the lights. A timer or a photocell controls the operation of the lights from dusk to dawn.

Set up is quick, usually less than a day per solar street light. It can be done by any experienced technician. The solar panel needs to be properly aligned to gather maximum energy during the day. There are few things to consider when planning using Solar street lights: It is very important to correctly size the different components (solar panels,lamp, battery, solar controller) according to the geographic area. Well designed solar street lights systems, provide adequate and low cost illumination for years, with minimum maintenance. LED lamps (Light Emitting Diodes) can work up to 50.000 hours.

While some alternative energy solutions for the home require a major investment for their initial installation, there are others which are not so complicated.

Solar lights are relatively simple to acquire and install, and are powered by clean energy. Since they usually require no wiring, they are very simple to set up.

Solar garden lights (or solar landscape lights) are one example of this. Solar garden lights have solar panels embedded into them at the top, facing the sun. Of course one drawback of these is that they might not stay lit forever. The amount of sun they receive will influence how long they last. The specifications of these lights can give you some idea of how long they will stay lit in the dark. But 8-12 hours is not an unusual estimate for a reasonably priced light, which should be plenty of time to get through the night in most circumstances.

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