One of the best technique to be green and save money is to use solar lights, it is an effective way to generate electricity from solar energy, then using it for lighting. And it is an important application of using renewable energy in lighting system.
There are many different styles of solar lights in the market, which can be used for different application and different places, like lighting up gardens, houses, streets, football stadium, work places, etc. It's important for us to know how this lights work, what benefits we shall harvest of installing them, and how to choose the proper light for our applications.
All these solar powered lights have a collection part which contains the solar photo-voltaic cells /solar panels, and the job of the collector is to collect the sun-light converting it to usable electricity with certain DC output voltage and current. So, it's considered as the electrical power supply of the lighting system. Another important component that must be incorporated in this lighting system, it is the automatic system that will turn lights off when daylight rise, and will switch on the lights when the daylight falls, this automatic system works depending on outdoor sensors, like light sensors, motion sensors, and other types of sensors.
The main important component in this solar light system is the batteries which will store energy during daylight, as solar panels will keep charging batteries till the end of the day, then at night time, the batteries will power on the lighting system and keeps all lit based on the need. So, when selecting batteries system type, we have to select the most reliable and longer life type although it will be more expensive than other types. Also, batteries system capacity should be well sufficient to feed the solar light for the whole nighttime period, so it should be well designed from the beginning.
When positions solar panels of the lighting system, we have make them directly exposed to the sun light, that is technically better, because direct sun exposure will make the fullest, quick and strongest charging to the batteries system during the day light.
