Efficiency of Solar Panels in Street Lights

When my colleague Usha Prasad and I stumbled on to Cypress Semiconductor's forays into LEDs and solar (oh, those topics again), during a recent conversation, it turned out to be quite enlightening in the end!

As most of us already know, energy conservation, cleaner and greener alternatives to electricity, and the use of solar power have been topics of discussion all over the world. And countries like India have to seriously look into tapping solar energy. In fact, as some of my other blog posts will reveal, India is indeed taking very serious steps toward achieving that!

Let me elucidate this point a bit further!

India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) recently announced a unified solar photovoltaic (SPV) program to promote the use of decentralized SPV systems for various applications in rural/ urban areas and SPV roof top systems for diesel saving in urban areas.

The government of India has also set an ambitious target of reaching 20 GW by 2020. Dr. B.M.S. Bist, Advisor, MNRE, during a recently held event in New Delhi, had said that solar PV is going to play a big role in assuring green technology in the country. A date of November 14, 2009, has been set for the Solar Mission Program to roll out!

Those interested to know more, can contact the MNRE, if they wish to!

Though solar street lighting is picking up in India, it is heavily dependent on subsidy from the government. Throwing more light on this subject, Rakesh Reddy, associate product manager at Cypress Semiconductor, told me that more viable business models like energy saving contracts need to be evaluated to increase the number of installations.

Explaining more about the savings from solar power, Reddy said that street lighting in several municipalities accounts for nearly half of the electrical expenditure. Perhaps, this may sound innocuous to you. However, do visit India and its rural areas, to better understand the impact of solar power and street lighting.

In addition to the energy bills, replacement and maintenance of low-pressure sodium or metal halide lamps pose additional costs and disruption of traffic.

In my next post, I will talk about how Cypress's Max Peak Power Tracker (MPPT) solution improves the efficiency of solar panels in street lights.

Pradeep

Oct. 1, 2009