Solar Street Light: What You Need to Know?

With the advancement of street lighting technology, nowadays more and more areas use solar street lights, which is energy-saving and environmentally friendly. In order to further understand the working principle and characteristics of solar street lights, we have written this article.

Part 1 Working principle

Under the control of the intelligent controller, solar panels absorb solar light of the sun at day and convert it into electrical energy so the solar cell components can charge the battery pack. At night, the battery pack supplies power to the LED light source to achieve ;the lighting function. The DC controller can ensure that the battery pack is not damaged due to overcharging or overdischarging, and it has functions such as light control, time control, temperature compensation, lightning protection, and reverse polarity protection.

Part 2 Structure and composition

The solar street light is composed of LED light source (including drive), solar panel, battery (including battery incubator), solar street light controller, street light pole (including base) and auxiliary materials and wires. Its main components and functions are:

Solar panel

Solar panel is the core and the most valuable part of the solar power generation system. Its function is to convert the sun′s radiant talents into electrical energy, and send it to storage batteries, or promote load operations. The quality and cost of solar panels will directly determine the quality and cost of the entire system.

Solar manipulator

The function of the solar manipulator is to control the operating conditions of the entire system, and to protect the battery from overcharging and over discharging. In places with large temperature differences, a qualified controller should also have the function of temperature compensation. Other additional functions such as light control switch and time control switch should be optional for the manipulator.

Storage battery

Generally speaking, the storage battery is lead-acid gel battery. In small and micro systems, nickel-hydrogen battery, nickel-cadmium battery or lithium battery can also be used. The battery is to store the electric energy declared by the solar panel when there is light, and then release it to power the street light when it is needed.

Part 3 Advantages

• 1. There is no need to build messy lines to set up solar street lights, only need a cement base and a battery pit, which can be fixed with galvanized bolts, eliminating the messy operating procedures in the construction of municipal circuit lights. At the same time, there is no concern about power outages.
• 2. It′s low cost. Solar powered street light is one-time investment and long-term benefits. Because of the concise line, no protection costs or valuable electricity costs are incurred. The cost will be recovered in 6-7 years, and more than 1 million electricity and protection costs will be saved in the next 3-4 years.
• 3. Safe and reliable. Solar powered street light is 12-24V low voltage, which is stable, reliable, no safety hazard, and the ideal product of ecological community and road administration department.
• The products use sun light source to offer electricity. They are green lighting products of pollution-free and radiation-free.

• 4. Solar street lights are high-tech products, their service life of each battery component is more than 10 years, which is much higher than the lifespan of ordinary electric lamps.

Part 4 Disadvantages

• 1. The level of development of solar applications with low power and high cost is theoretically feasible in some respects, and technically sophisticated. However, some solar energy equipment has low power and high cost. In general, the economy cannot match the conventional power.
• 2. Although the total amount of solar radiation reaching the surface of the earth is very large, the energy flux density is very low. Therefore, when using solar energy, to obtain a certain conversion power, a set of collection and conversion equipment with a relatively large area is often required, and the cost is relatively high.