Design and build a stand alone solar powered street lighting

Abstract

Free electricity from the sun would appear to be the future power of our generation. This is especially the case for Malaysia, which has the advantage of unlimited sunshine all year round. With such abundant sunshine, we should be using solar powered traffic lights, solar highway lights, solar streetlights, and many applications. Solar modules (photovoltaic panels) are one of the most important assets to most renewable energy system. It is work by converting sunlight directly into electricity energy and will make the street light turn on automatically just after dusk and turn off automatically at dawn. All solar systems need at least 1 battery to stored energy. The energy can be stored in batteries and use later on after dusk. This project required in designing the battery charge controller for the battery. The battery charge controller unit manages the electricity flow by optimizing the energy stored in battery and guaranteeing the battery durable in long period of time. The battery will charging until reach a set-up cut-off voltage (15 volts) After exceed that level, the battery will stop charging until the battery voltage drop to 12 volts. The battery will re-charge after the voltage of the battery reach 12 volts. The simple word to describe the flow of the circuit is that this circuit will detect changes of voltages when the input voltage is between two limits (12 volts to 15 volts).Beside that, this project required in designing the light detector to make the street lighting operate only in night/dull mode. It make sure that the voltage supply for the load is 12 volts to avoid overvoltage and 9 volts will cut-off the load from supply to make sure the lights do not dim. For the lighting, the street light will use super bright LED; replace the filament 12 volts car lamp that is used before.