What Components Are In A Solar Street Light?
Sustainability may be the greatest challenge in modern manufacturing. Solar street lights are the green choice when it comes to lighting your neighbourhood. They’re growing in popularity, and it’s no surprise why. They provide better value for money, optimised lighting, and they run on renewables. What’s more, they need less maintenance and installation is easier. Put that all together and you’ll see why solar street lights are your best choice. Solar panel costs are shrinking and battery efficiency is on a constant incline. It’s only getting better from here.
You don’t need to plug solar street lights into a grid, and you can trust them to run come rain or shine. If you need them to, they’ll stay bright from dusk ’til dawn. Whatever configuration you want to run – e.g. split time, adaptive lighting – solar street lights can do it. Miss seeing the stars? Solar street lights can even reduce light pollution. This is thanks to dark-sky compliant luminaires with aimed optics and sharp cutoff fixtures and warm 3000K LED.
Which Components Power Solar Street Lights?
Solar street lights that work grid-free rely on a few parts. They’ve got a solar panel assembly that lives on top of the pole. This faces north with no shading, to ensure it gets the most direct sunlight it can. This panel system connects to a battery, which is housed beneath the panels.
During the daylight hours, the solar panels collect energy from the sun. They send that down to the batteries via wires. Come night time, the battery powers the solar street light. Every element of a solar street light system will undergo careful consideration. The solar street light specialists at Leadsun consider a huge range of factors. These include:
- Installation location.
- Winter weather conditions.
- Local wind-load requirements.
- System operation profile.
We take all these factors and analyse how they come together. The end result is a guarantee of reliable operation for solar street light users.
How Do Solar Street Lights Work?
We touched on this above when we described the way solar panels charge batteries during the day. After sunset, the solar panel acts as a ‘photocell’. The absence of light tells the system to activate the light fixture. Control electronics manage the light output and keep it shining from dusk ’til dawn. It doesn’t have to stay on that long – it might only shine for a certain number of hours. You can configure the timing any way you please. This is especially easy with Leadsun’s EDGE wireless monitoring service. You can use the EDGE app to control every aspect of your neighbourhood’s solar street light system, any time, any place.
Come sunrise, the light hitting the solar panel tells the fixture to turn off. Now the panel goes back to charging the battery, rather than using power. Depending on how strong the sun is and how the weather is, the battery will charge at different levels. We ensure there is no shading on the panel whatsoever. This is to prevent the solar street light from failing to charge as intended. If the batteries don’t get enough juice, they might not operate the following night. Leadsun uses the patented double Lithium LiFePO4 battery in our solar street light systems to ensure that this is never an issue. Our revolutionary design algorithmically optimises charging to double the lifespan of our solar batteries, ensuring that you’re never left in the dark.
Solar street lights are an excellent solution for your lighting needs. Save the hassle of plugging into the grid and never stress about brownouts or blackouts again. Solar street lights operate on their own. Get in touch with a Leadsun representative to discuss how solar street lights can benefit your council area.
