Advantages and Disadvantages of Solar Street Lights

Solar street light explanation

What is solar street light? Solar street light is actually not difficult to understand, that is to centralize the high efficiency solar panels, ultra-long life lithium batteries, high luminous efficiency LEDs and intelligent controllers.

Because the solar panels, batteries and LEDs are ultra-long-life, they need less maintenance, and the LEDs used for solar street lights are low-glare, brighter light, consume less energy, and are waterproof, so it is much better than conventional street light. While emitting a white light that also effectively reduces the attraction of insects.

Solar street lights are widely used in urban street lighting, parking lots and community lighting, which not only have a positive impact on the environment, but also improve safety at night. 

Then in addition to this, what kind of advantages and disadvantages of solar street lights? Let's look at it together:

Advantages of Solar Street Lights

Advantage 1: Environmental Protection

Compared with traditional street lamps, solar street lamps mainly rely on the sun during the day to convert light into electricity, and release electricity for lighting at night. Completely without other conventional energy sources, and solar energy is recognized as the world's most environmentally friendly energy source, so in terms of pollution, solar street lamp pollution index is almost 0, it's the only pollution is the battery. But in general, the battery appears to pollute the environment very low, and when the battery can not be used, it will be recycled.

Advantage 2: Safety

Utility street lamps generally use AC220v or 380v voltage for power supply lighting, once the utility street lights appear damaged or fault will appear leakage, fire danger. Solar street light uses DC12-24v low-voltage power supply, stable voltage, reliable operation, there will not be any safety hazards.

Advantage 3: Energy Saving

The energy supply of solar street light is sunlight, solar energy is an inexhaustible energy source for us human beings, ordinary utility street light because of the use of alternating current, in order to supply lighting at night, it will consume a lot of traditional energy.

Advantage 4: Low Investment In The Long Run

From the present point of view, if you buy utility street light, the prices are much lower than the price of solar street lights, but utility street lights also need other investments, such as control boxes, cables, engineering, running costs, maintenance, etc., while the solar street light is a one-time investment, there is no maintenance costs, but also offer brighter luminosity and consume less energy, generally about 2 years to recover costs.

Advantage 5: Easy Installation

Installation of solar street lights construction is very small, no need to open the trench buried line, do not need to build a power station around, only need to install the cement base, in the stainless steel can be fixed, and even the integration of solar street lamps can be installed on the existing poles or walls, the installation process will not be more than 10 minutes, you can install more than 50 a day.

Related Post: How to install Solar Street Light

Advantage 6: Wide Range of Installation and Application

Solar street light installation is almost not subject to geographical restrictions, whether it is a mountainous area, grasslands, fields, wherever there is sunshine can be installed solar street lamps, especially suitable for green landscape lighting equipped with high-grade residential and outdoor lighting, tourist attractions coastal landscape lighting and embellishments, industrial development zones, industrial and mining enterprises street lamps, the major colleges and universities outdoor lighting.

Disadvantages of Solar Street Lights

Everything has two sides, solar street lights are no exception, although he has numerous advantages, but inevitably, he also has some disadvantages,for example:

Disadvantage 1: Large initial investment

In the solar street light just emerging, due to the low conversion efficiency of solar panels and high cost, making the initial installation cost of solar street light than the traditional street light installation cost is at least 3 times higher. But now this disadvantage has been less obvious, because with the improvement of the conversion efficiency of solar panels, as well as the falling cost of battery, so that the cost of solar street lamps has fallen dramatically.

Disadvantage 2: Easily Stolen

Before a lot of customers feedback that the newly installed solar street lights, many batteries were stolen. Because the solar street light is a low-voltage DC power supply, there is no networking with the utility, so thieves do not worry about the risk of electric shock.

It is unscrupulous to steal the battery. But now the use of lead-acid batteries in solar street lights has slowly withdrawn from the market, replaced by high-performance, long-life lithium batteries, which can be installed on the top of the light pole.

And we have also developed an anti-climbing pole system. Greatly reduce the risk of theft.

Disadvantage 3: Lamp Power Limitations

In some places with high brightness requirements, such as highways, solar street lights are not yet suitable for installation. Because in the brightness of high demand areas, usually need higher power LED lights and larger solar panels to ensure that meet the standards and requirements.

However, if the solar panel power is too large, you also need to consider the requirements of the windproof rating. So in the wind is relatively large, and the lighting brightness requirements of high places, or not very suitable for the installation of solar street lights

Disadvantage 4: Much Snow and Dusty Places are not Suitable For Installation

Because in dusty places, if the dust accumulates on the solar panel for a long time, it will have a serious impact on the charging efficiency of the solar panel. And the battery will also affect the lighting time if it can't be full for a long time. So the solar panel power generation efficiency and battery charging efficiency affect each other, will seriously shorten the service life. Ultimately, it will affect the lighting effect.

Disadvantage 5: Installation Location Restrictions.

Although solar street lights do not need to dig trenches and lay lines, and can be installed in places where utility power can not reach, but there are some special installation environments that are still not recommended to be installed, such as trees, buildings, or shade area, because if there are trees or buildings in the shade, the solar panel charging efficiency will be reduced.

However, it is important to note that while solar streetlights have these potential disadvantages, many of them have been mitigated by technological advances and innovative solutions. For example, SUNVIS has developed anti-climbing systems, MPPT charge controllers, and auto-cleaning solar street lights, this new technologies will solove most of the probelms.

So choosing a professional solar street light manufacturer and designing a solar street light system to fit a specific application scenario as well as performing proper maintenance can significantly reduce the impact of these shortcomings, resulting in a reliable, efficient lighting solution.

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