PV Gap

Pedro Said:

For Solar Street light, How to calculate the rating for LEDs used, battery and the solar module itself?

We Answered:

It's a difficult thing to calculate. You need:
worse case number of hours of full sun per day
Number of hours the batteries have to run the lights on days without sun.

The problem is, you can have perhaps 3 days without sun due to a storm. that means the batteries have to power the light for that number of hours. And then when you get, say, 6 hours of sun, the solar panels have to be powerful enough to recharge that bank of batteries in that time.

So, you have to set all of these parameters, else you wind up with several hundreds of watts of solar panel for a 40 watt light and a huge battery.

Take an example. An ordinary auto battery can store about 1 kW-hour of energy. To operate the 40 watt light for 70 hours, means you need a 2800 kW-hour of storage, or 3 auto batteries. To recharge that 2800 kW-hours in 6 hours, you need 500 watts of solar panel. And that doesn't count losses.

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Kevin Said:

how to find more australia solar lights customers?

We Answered:

I assume you have written or visited all the major lights distributors. Have you approached the local councils and the electrical distributors for street lights and state authorities for traffic lights?

The garden lights are commonly sold by hardware stores, approach the large chains about getting your range included.

Telephone chargers are usually sold by mobile phone distributors.

You might also need the services of an agent or representative (preferably with excellent English) in Australia whose job is to visit outlets with your range and get them included in an outlet. Performance-based incentives would ensure that they are working for you to sell more units.

Solar lighting is still relatively underused in Australia.