Footprint Product Profile: UGE's off-grid street lamps

Urban Green Energy (UGE) this week announced the release of their Sanya Streetlamp series, a standalone off-grid lighting solution that they suggest has the potential of becoming a viable alternative to traditional sodium-vapour street lighting.

Rather than drawing energy from the grid, the 10m high galvanised steel Sanya SLN and Sanya SLS models are fuelled either by solar power, or a combination of wind and solar. Each light is also supplied with five days of back-up power, a feature built in due to the intermittency and often reverse-demand nature of the energy sources. The power output consumption per year of the LED lamps used in Sanya street lamp is approximately 20 per cent that of a conventional 400W high-pressure sodium lamp.

Suggested applications for the luminaires include motorways, bike paths, parks and housing areas.

Despite higher upfront costs, these stand-alone lighting technologies have the potential to totally remove wiring installation and maintenance charges. They are particularly suited for installation in small numbers in remote locations that are inaccessible to the national grid.

The SLS lights require wind speeds of at least 12m/s for successful operation, though they also operate from built-in PVs.

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