Municipal Solar Power
by Chris Tilley
On my drive home from work I go past a off leash dog park and noticed these lights have been installed with what look to be solar panels on the top. Going to the City of Kelowna website told me that these are indeed solar lighting. Kelowna is putting them in a number of parks and other facilities.(source) These are being supplied by Carmanah Technologies Corporation. They have a number of interesting products.
The first are these solar powered area lighting.(source) They are using LED lighting provided by BetaLED and there own solar technology. These lights use LEDS powered by a solar panel Battery combination. They require no cabling to the area and are therefore easier to install. They have a logic system that allows you to specify the times that the lights are on and at what power level. So you can set them to come on at full power for a couple of hours early at night and then reduce the light level to conserve battery power and go for the rest of the night. Most importantly the only energy they use is solar so no carbon dioxide emissions.
The second one that I saw and didn’t realize was solar until I went through their website were some new pedestrian crosswalk warning lights.(source). I have now spotted five of these in Kelowna just on my normal routine. Again they have the same advantages of the area lighting above. These ones only come on when the button is pressed and can run 540 times per day.
The third is their ‘i-Stop’ Solar power transit stop.(source) It uses the same solar technology as the others. It provides security lighting some the rider are safer why waiting. It has a flasher that the rider activates so the driver knows that there is someone at the stop thus reducing ‘pass bys’. Finally it illuminated the schedule so the rider can figure out when the next bus is due.
Throughout writing this I kept thinking that the company sounded familiar and just passed it of as that I must have found their website before. In reality they are the company that sponsored the solar panels on the Eco RV so thank you. They have a number of products aimed at a number of markets to quote their company overview.
Carmanah’s products include solar-powered beacons for marine, aviation, and defense applications; solar-electric power systems for mobile and remote applications; grid-tie and off-grid photovoltaic systems for commercial, industrial and institutional applications; solar-powered area lighting for parks, campuses and industrial facilities; and bright, energy-efficient signage for retail, casino, roadway and architectural (source)