Facilities

Solar powered lights

Solar powered lights in California

As we can see, solar power is not only used, to supply electricity to a home or sell it to the electric company. There are also other smaller applications, but, equally useful.

This installation provides lighting with solar lamps, for the parking lot of a restaurant. In total, 3 solar streetlights were installed, each consisting of a 40 Wp photovoltaic panel, a solar regulator, a 15 W low consumption light bulb and a 60 A battery.

The installation has an automatic on and off system that follows the astral calendar and it offers independent lighting for almost the entire night, during the summertime, while in winter, it has a 4 to 6 hour capacity. Maintenance free gel batteries, without lead acid, are used. 165 Wp is the installed power for an average consumption of 200 Wh/day.

There are other uses of solar power and, in general, solar energy and some can even be used in the day to day life, no matter where we live. There are, for instance, toys, flashlights, chargers for rechargeable batteries, chargers for mobile phones and other devices that are powered by mini-solar panels. There are even baby bottle heaters, solar ovens and stoves powered, exclusively, by solar energy, although, these, are mainly used in developing countries like India, where they had to find solutions to their growing power supply problems. In fact, in India, there is a dining room in a temple that feeds 18,000 people daily and uses only solar energy. There are 108 Scheffler reflectors and a solar concentrator specially designed to be easily built from materials available in almost any part of the world.