Solar lights absorb the sun&#;s energy during the day and store it in a battery that can generate light once darkness falls. Like solar panels used to generate electricity, solar lights use photovoltaic technology. They can be used for a variety of indoor and outdoor purposes, from lighting streets to illuminating homes and gardens, and are particularly useful in places and circumstances where it isn&#;t possible to connect to a central power grid.
BEBEST contains other products and information you need, so please check it out.
How Solar Lighting Works
Solar lights use photovoltaic (PV) cells, which absorb the sun&#;s energy and create an electrical charge that moves through the panel. Wires from the solar cell connect to the battery, which converts and stores the power as chemical energy until it's needed.
The battery later uses that energy to power an LED (light-emitting diode) bulb. The diode is a semiconductor that allows electrons to pass between its two points, creating electromagnetic energy in the form of light during hours of darkness.
LED technology generates light up to 90% more efficiently than incandescent and fluorescent lighting, making it ideal for solar lighting systems. Rather than burning out like a traditional light bulb, LED bulbs simply dim over time. But their typical lifetime is far longer than a traditional bulb: tens of thousands of hours versus the 1,000 hours of an incandescent bulb, or 3,000 hours for a halogen bulb.
Types and Uses of Solar Lighting
Solar lighting sales have taken off in response to the global demand for less carbon-intensive energy sources and as a strategy for increasing energy resilience in the face of extreme weather and other natural disasters that leave centralized power systems vulnerable. It is also helping to meet the energy needs of developing regions where connection to a centralized electricity grid is difficult or impossible.
Solar lighting provides cheap, attractive, low-maintenance illumination for homes, businesses, and public infrastructure while reducing the environmental impact. When we think about solar lighting, there are two broad categories: indoor and outdoor solar lights. Here are a few of the many solar lighting uses.
Street and Parking Lights
Solar-powered street lamps generate power without connection to a central grid.
/ Getty Images
Investment in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and other sustainable planning approaches have led to rapid growth in solar street lighting for towns and cities.
Solar-powered lamps provide cities with a cheap way to illuminate streets, sidewalks, and parking lots, creating better safety for pedestrians and drivers alike. They typically include a lamp post and fixture powered by a small solar panel array attached to the post. This makes each lamp self-contained and able to generate carbon-free electricity without requiring connection to a central grid and has the added benefit of reducing overall installation costs.
Traffic Lights
Solar-powered traffic lights are not only economical; they can save lives during power outages and in places lacking reliable electricity sources by ensuring consistent, uninterrupted operation of traffic signals.
Solar Sign Lights
We sometimes take for granted the illumination of billboards, street signs, and storefront signs, but proper lighting is quite important for achieving effective signage. Solar sign lights provide a way for businesses and public services to highlight essential information while saving money on electricity. They come in a variety of brightness levels depending on the needs.
Solar Floodlights
During and after a natural disaster or other circumstances that cause power cuts, solar-powered emergency floodlights can help crews make repairs under challenging conditions without the need for generator-powered lighting system. These powerful solar lights can also be employed in home workshops, garages, yards, and businesses that need extra security or stronger illumination. Some are security lights come with timers or sensors to ward off would-be troublemakers.
Garden Lights
Solar lanterns illuminate green plants along a garden path.
bruev / Getty Images
Solar lights have become extremely popular for use in gardens, patios, and outdoor dining venues. They provide both safety and aesthetics, and come in a wide array of styles and products.
Contact us to discuss your requirements of up down outdoor solar lights supplier. Our experienced sales team can help you identify the options that best suit your needs.
Lawn lights can highlight attractive garden features like flower beds, trees, or sculptures. Pool lights illuminate water elements like swimming pools, ponds, and fountains. A string of solar lights can be stretched across a patio, porch or between trees to add a touch of festive ambience. Ground lighting along a walkway, driveway, or steps improves safety and provides an attractive design element.
Solar Candles
Suitable for both indoor and outdoor use, flameless solar-powered candles and torches are a safe alternative to a real candle. Modern designs feature realistic flickering &#;flames&#; that resemble the real thing but avoid risk of fire and spilling messy hot wax.
Solar Desk and Table Lamps
A solar desk lamp is a great accessory for a home office. For one thing, it's cordless and thus completely portable, which makes it possible to set up a remote workstation virtually anywhere, indoors or outdoors. Designs for desk lamps range from small clip-on book lights to sleek and sturdy tabletop varieties. Table lamps, meanwhile, create ambience as they produce illumination.
Like other types of residential solar lights, some models come with a built-in solar panel while others must be connected to an external photovoltaic panel, but neither type requires direct sunlight. The energy generated by the small PV panel gets stored in a battery, which provides several hours of light before the lamp will need a recharge.
Environmental Benefits and Drawbacks
Solar lamps are charged with small solar panels at a refugee camp following floods in Malawi.
Ashley Cooper / Getty Images
An investment in high-quality solar lights can provide years of virtually carbon-free lighting for homes, offices, parks, gardens, and public infrastructure. It&#;s a great way for an individual or community to conserve energy and reduce disruptions posed by extreme weather and climate disasters.
For communities that lack centralized energy infrastructure, including many rural communities around the world, solar lighting makes a big contribution to energy independence. It also contributes to public safety by illuminating walkways and streets, reducing traffic accidents, and increasing personal security.
However, solar lighting, like all solar energy systems, has environmental impacts. The batteries and electronic components will eventually become waste, and that waste has hazardous ingredients that must be properly managed in order to avoid toxic pollution. Batteries can contain lead, lithium, plastics, and sulfuric acid; PV panels contain silicon, aluminum, tin, copper, cadmium, and lead; electrical components contain plastics and metals. If not disposed of properly, these substances can pollute the air, soil, and water.
This is a particular challenge in developing countries, where waste management is more likely to be conducted without regulation to ensure safe disposal. The absence of this process can produce e-waste that poses serious threats to the environment. Some countries require or encourage end-of-life recycling of at least some of these products.
Today, there are calls to strengthen such practices and ensure that solar projects everywhere support safe disposal and recycling of solar materials once the components have reached the end of their productive use. Of course, this is important not only for solar but traditional lighting.
Wherever you live, it's important to research the longevity of your solar lighting products and prioritize quality. Opt for those which are likely to last, so the environmental benefits don't dwindle.
Long before the first Earth Day was celebrated on April 22, , generating awareness about the environment and support for environmental protection, scientists were making the first discoveries in solar energy. It all began with Edmond Becquerel, a young physicist working in France, who in observed and discovered the photovoltaic effect&#; a process that produces a voltage or electric current when exposed to light or radiant energy. A few decades later, French mathematician Augustin Mouchot was inspired by the physicist&#;s work. He began registering patents for solar-powered engines in the s. From France to the U.S., inventors were inspired by the patents of the mathematician and filed for patents on solar-powered devices as early as .
Take a light step back to when New York inventor Charles Fritts created the first solar cell by coating selenium with a thin layer of gold. Fritts reported that the selenium module produced a current &#;that is continuous, constant, and of considerable force.&#; This cell achieved an energy conversion rate of 1 to 2 percent. Most modern solar cells work at an efficiency of 15 to 20 percent. So, Fritts created what was a low impact solar cell, but still, it was the beginning of photovoltaic solar panel innovation in America. Named after Italian physicist, chemist and pioneer of electricity and power, Alessandro Volta, photovoltaic is the more technical term for turning light energy into electricity, and used interchangeably with the term photoelectric.
Only a few years later in , inventor Edward Weston received two patents for solar cells &#; U.S. Patent 389,124 and U.S. Patent 389,425. For both patents, Weston proposed, &#;to transform radiant energy derived from the sun into electrical energy, or through electrical energy into mechanical energy.&#; Light energy is focused via a lens (f) onto the solar cell (a), &#;a thermopile (an electronic device that converts thermal energy into electrical energy) composed of bars of dissimilar metals.&#; The light heats up the solar cell and causes electrons to be released and current to flow. In this instance, light creates heat, which creates electricity; this is the exact reverse of the way an incandescent light bulb works, converting electricity to heat that then generates light.
That same year, a Russian scientist by the name of Aleksandr Stoletov created the first solar cell based on the photoelectric effect, which is when light falls on a material and electrons are released. This effect was first observed by a German physicist, Heinrich Hertz. In his research, Hertz discovered that more power was created by ultraviolet light than visible light. Today, solar cells use the photoelectric effect to convert sunlight into power. In , American inventor Melvin Severy received patents 527,377 for an "Apparatus for mounting and operating thermopiles" and 527,379 for an "Apparatus for generating electricity by solar heat." Both patents were essentially early solar cells based on the discovery of the photoelectric effect. The first generated &#;electricity by the action of solar heat upon a thermo-pile&#; and could produce a constant electric current during the daily and annual movements of the sun, which alleviated anyone from having to move the thermopile according to the sun&#;s movements. Severy&#;s second patent from was also meant for using the sun&#;s thermal energy to produce electricity for heat, light and power. The &#;thermos piles,&#; or solar cells as we call them today, were mounted on a standard to allow them to be controlled in the vertical direction as well as on a turntable, which enabled them to move in a horizontal plane. &#;By the combination of these two movements, the face of the pile can be maintained opposite the sun all times of the day and all seasons of the year,&#; reads the patent.
Almost a decade later, American inventor Harry Reagan received patents for thermal batteries, which are structures used to store and release thermal energy. The thermal battery was invented to collect and store heat by having a large mass that can heat up and release energy. It does not store electricity but &#;heat,&#; however, systems today use this technology to generate electricity by conventional turbines. In , Reagan was granted U.S. patent 588,177 for an &#;application of solar heat to thermo batteries.&#; In the claims of the patent, Reagan said his invention included &#;a novel construction of apparatus in which the sun&#;s rays are utilized for heating thermo-batteries, the object being to concentrate the sun&#;s rays to a focus and have one set of junctions of a thermo-battery at the focus of the rays, while suitable cooling devices are applied to the other junctions of said thermo-battery.&#; His invention was a means to collecting, storing and distributing solar heat as needed.
In , William Coblentz, of Washington, D.C., received patent 1,077,219 for a &#;thermal generator,&#; which was a device that used light rays &#;to generate an electric current of such a capacity to do useful work.&#; He also meant for the invention to have cheap and strong construction. Although this patent was not for a solar panel, these thermal generators were invented to either convert heat directly into electricity or to transform that energy into power for heating and cooling.
By the s, Bell Laboratories realized that semiconducting materials such as silicon were more efficient than selenium. They managed to create a solar cell that was 6 percent efficient. Inventors Daryl Chapin, Calvin Fuller, and Gerald Pearson (inducted to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in ) were the brains behind the silicon solar cell at Bell Labs. While it was considered the first practical device for converting solar energy to electricity, it was still cost prohibitive for most people. Silicon solar cells are expensive to produce, and when you combine multiple cells to create a solar panel, it's even more expensive for the public to purchase. University of Delaware is credited with creating one of the first solar buildings, &#;Solar One,&#; in . The construction ran on a combination of solar thermal and solar photovoltaic power. The building didn&#;t use solar panels; instead, solar was integrated into the rooftop.
It was around this time in the s that an energy crisis emerged in the United States. Congress passed the Solar Energy Research, Development and Demonstration Act of , and the federal government was committed more than ever &#;to make solar viable and affordable and market it to the public.&#; After the debut of &#;Solar One,&#; people saw solar energy as an option for their homes. Growth slowed in the s due to the drop in traditional energy prices. But in the next decades, the federal government was more involved with solar energy research and development, creating grants and tax incentives for those who used solar systems. According to Solar Energy Industries Association, solar has had an average annual growth rate of 50 percent in the last 10 years in the United States, largely due to the Solar Investment Tax Credit enacted in . Installing solar is also more affordable now due to installation costs dropping over 70 percent in the last decade.
That said, at least until recently, the means to find a viable and affordable energy solution is more important than making solar cells aesthetically pleasing or beautiful. Traditional solar panels on American rooftops aren&#;t exactly subtle or pleasing to the eye. They&#;ve been an eyesore for neighbors at times, and surely a pain for homeowners associations to deal with, but the benefits to the environment are substantial. So, where&#;s the balance? Today, companies are striving towards better looking and advanced solar technology, such as building-applied photovoltaic (BAPV). This type of discreet solar cell is integrated into existing roof tiles or ceramic and glass facades of buildings.
Solus Engineering, Enpulz, Guardian Industries Corporation, SolarCity Corporation, United Solar Systems, and Tesla (after their merger with SolarCity) have all been issued patents for solar cells that are much more discreet than the traditional solar panel. All of the patents incorporate photovoltaic systems, which transform light into electricity using semiconducting materials such as silicon. Solar panels and solar technology has come a long way, so these patented inventions are proof that the technology is still improving its efficiency and aesthetics.
If you are looking for more details, kindly visit 8w solar panel fabrication.