Brickmakers find their way thanks to Leadsun’s solar lighting upgrade
Client
Austral Bricks
Lighting Compliance
AS/NZS 1158.3.1
Project Overview
After grid-powered street lighting was disconnected along the private entry road into Austral Bricks’ Wollert head office, quarry and operational site in Victoria, the company sought an alternative lighting solution.
Austral Bricks is Australia’s leading brick and paver manufacturer, serving the nation’s building industry for over a century. With busy quarrying and manufacturing operations on private acreage about 40 kilometres north of Melbourne, the asphalt road leading into the site needed full illumination to ensure a safer route for heavy commercial transport vehicles.
Obsolete grid lighting rouses renewable refit
Many commercial trucks, trade vehicles and staff cars access the Austral Bricks site via Brick Makers Drive. It was unsafe for drivers to travel to the site without street lighting between dusk and dawn. For instance, early morning dispatches of brick-laden heavy haulage lorries heading to building sites had to use the dark road and potentially evade kangaroos and other hard-to-see obstacles.
Before seeking the Brick Makers Drive lighting system, Austral Bricks had purchased a single solar light from Leadsun to illuminate their site’s front entrance and signage. This light was dependable and highly effective, so the company sought to install a similar sustainable system along the entry road.
Initially, Austral Bricks considered attaching solar lights to the old timber light poles used for the obsolete grid lighting. However, the timber poles were set too far back from the roadside to provide sufficient road illumination from solar-powered lights.
New poles with outreaching arms
Leadsun initially installed 11 lights along the roadway; then, Austral Bricks arranged a few more units for the operational end of the road, where a security guard receives incoming vehicles. The final project was to install 15 solar lights, each with a 130W solar module and 13W LED output, on lowerable galvanised poles positioned closer to the road than the grid light poles.
Leadsun designed each new pole to be 6.5m high with a 1.5m outreach arm. The light source was positioned safely above passing trucks with ample light falling on the road in consecutive sections about 50m apart.
The lighting level was not designed to a specific standard but provided the reliable ‘way-finding’ light the company requested; to help truck drivers late at night and in the early morning to see the road ahead and where they were going.
Safer night-time road for commercial trucks
The solution’s strategic design, coupled with the quality and reliability of our equipment and ease of maintenance, made it easy for Austral Brick to choose Leadsun. Without onerous compliance hurdles or a lengthy connection process, the Leadsun solar solution was installed and operating within four weeks.
The new solar lights along Brick Makers Drive allow trucks and other delivery vehicles to drive more safely and efficiently into the Austral Bricks site at night, avoiding wildlife and other potentially dangerous obstructions. The lights also support all-hours workers using the roadway to find their way to work effortlessly.
Leadsun System
- 130W solar modules with lithium-ion batteries and lights
- 13W LED output
- 5m powder-coated poles with 1.2m outreaches and ragbolt footings
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