Schematic wiring diagram of the solar streetlight

Schematic wiring diagram of the solar streetlight

Automatic street light system is very common nowadays as it provides intelligent street lighting mechanism. It provides light automatically during night without any human interference. These energy saving street lights make use of incandescent lamps instead of LEDs.

Components

Solar powered street lights

Solar street lights consist of 5 main parts:

Solar Panel

The solar panel is one of the most important parts of solar street lights, as the solar panel will convert solar energy into electricity. There are 2 types of solar panel: mono-crystalline and poly-crystalline. Conversion rate of mono-crystalline solar panel is much higher than poly-crystalline.

Lighting Fixture

LED is usually used as lighting source of modern solar street light, as the LED will provide much higher Lumens with lower energy consumption. The energy consumption of LED fixture is at least 50% lower than HPS fixture which is widely used as lighting source in Traditional street lights. LEDs lack of warm up time also allows for use of motion detectors for additional efficiency gains.

Rechargeable Battery

Battery will store the electricity from solar panel during the day and provide energy to the fixture during night. The life cycle of the battery is very important to the lifetime of the light and the capacity of the battery will affect the backup days of the lights. There are usually 2 types of batteries: Gel Cell Deep Cycle Battery and Lead Acid Battery and many more.

Controller

Controller is also very important for solar street light. A controller will usually decide to switch on /off charging and lighting. Some modern controllers are programmable so that user can decide the appropriate change of charging, lighting and dimming.

Pole

Strong Poles are necessary to all street lights, especially to solar street lights as there are often components mounted on the top of the pole: fixtures, panels and sometimes batteries. However, in some newer designs, the PV panels and all electronics are integrated in the pole itself. Wind resistance is also a factor.