Street lights are something we can’t really go without nowadays. With so many people walking or driving around, staying for just five minutes in a dark street is as dangerous as it can get.
Outdoor street lights help us stay safe and minimize the risk of accident. However, there are some lighting technologies that work better than others. Solar street lights are one of the environmentally friendly and energy efficient ways to improve our residential areas. This blog puts forward some major points on how the outdoor lighting transformation can impact our residential areas with solar residential lights.
Saving Money on Energy
Here’s a thought: whenever you use traditional street lights, the lighting system goes through a very energy demanding process. The lights need electricity to function and they are tapping into the main power of your city’s electrical grid. Add a couple thousand lights to that and we have many light bulbs to pay for each month.
Now you may ask yourself “this is on the street, so why does it concern me?” Well, think about it. The government has to allocate money to cover this public service cost one way or another, since having functional outdoor lighting is in the public interest. As a result, we have some ridiculously big taxes that have to cover all city-wide outdoor lighting operations, including servicing and maintenance.
Now, if we switch to solar LED lights, we will no longer need energy from the electrical grid. Solar street lights will simply collect energy from the sun during the day, store it in the solar battery system and use it throughout the night for illumination. Now, guess whose taxes and electricity bills will be much lower this month because of that? If you want to read more on the difference between traditional and solar energy lights, click here.
Energy Efficiency
Solar street lights use new LED technology which delivers brighter light for less energy used. LED lights with less wattages than traditional style fixtures are more efficient and contribute to lower energy consumption while providing higher luminosity levels. LED fixtures are also less prone to failures with an average number of 50,000 working hours, whereas traditional street lights range from 5,000 to 8,000 working hours with much higher failure rate.
Metal halide or high pressure sodium lamps provide much lower CRI (color rendering index) while LED lights can be colored to match just about any CRI with better visibility and multiple distribution patterns available. These industry shifts lead to increase in retrofitting of traditional old style street lights with LED fixtures.
In addition, solar-powered LED lights are use smart technology that enables the user to set all LED lighting features remotely and optimie the system efficiently. Check out the video below to see how solar LED street lights illuminate in practice.
Control over Luminosity Levels
Imagine that you are walking by the street lights in your residential area. It is 3 am and there’s no soul walking around – and yet the lights are going at full power. Not only will this affect us financially, but it will also waste energy that we could use on something else. With a motion sensor and dimming functionality integrated in the system, a solar street light can keep the LED bulb at lower luminosity levels when there’s no one around and bring it to 100% when someone walks by the pole. This feature will save residents a lot of money in the long run.
Solar outdoor lighting can also be adjusted for a constant street light level. During winter months, for instance, there isn’t as much sunlight during the day as we have during summer. Sometimes, we can go for months without having sun. This is why we can’t be wasteful with the outdoor lights in our residential areas.
To aid us in that process, the system of smart solar LED street lights will use algorithms to predict the weather conitions – and balance the energy generated and used for lighting accordingly. This feature will not only reduce the solar street light cost, but it will also ensure we don’t run out of energy when we need it the most.
Repairs and Maintenance
With traditional street lights, the process would be fairly annoying: the light would malfunction, the street would be dark for a while, someone would complain, and then some time would pass until the infrastructure operators can actually send someone to fix the issue.
Now, with solar energy lights, most of the maintenance will be done remotely. All they have to do is tap into the remote management system and control the problem in real-time. Not only is this money-efficient, but it is much less time consuming as well.
Reliable Performance and Security Issues
The problem with traditional street lighting is that light bulbs are prone to a burnout rather quickly. The solar LED lights have a longer lifespan and will perform well even in the most unfortunate conditions.
They are much more reliable than classic light bulbs – and much safer to maintain. The average LED light can function for 20 years before it has to be replaced. To learn more on solar street light performance, click here.
Impact on the Environment
Here’s another thought: each time we turn on a traditional light bulb, we shoot CO2 emissions into the air. We know that this is bad for our health and the air we breathe – so imagine what happens when a road full of traditional lights go on at the same time.
Solar LED residential lights will significatnly reduce CO2 emissions – especially considering how you have full control over the luminosity. The burnout will not be that high anymore and not only will your wallet benefit from this, but your health as well. To learn more on how cities can create positive impact on the environment with solar street lights, read the following article.
Independnce from Electrical Grid Disruptions
How many times has the power been cut off on the entire street and you were all left wandering in the same place because you couldn’t see anything? Well, the advantage of outdoor solar LED lights is that they are not connected to the main grid – so if the power goes off, the lights will continue to go on.
Each street light is powered by solar panels and it functions independenlty from the electrical grid. This is also very useful in case of a natural disaster and other emergencies. It’ll be nice to know that in case of a hurricane you still have something that illuminates your residential area.
Final Thoughts on Solar LED Residential Lights
Many cities and residential areas have already installed solar street lights – and the advantages are quite obvious on the energy bill, installation costs, servicing and maintenance – especially when each street light unit is controlled 24/7 by a remote management system.
Plus, they are easier to maintain, control and to rely on. With solar street lights, you won’t fear that a storm outage will render the street lights useless. Check out our Ultimate Guide on Solar Street Lights below to find out more how your residential area can benefit from clean energy lighting.