Solar Power Developments For Outdoor Lighting & Networks
Filed Under Environment Friendly Outdoor Lighting, Solar lighting | Leave a Comment
The challenge with consumers around the globe is to encourage them to balance the convenience of plug-and-play solutions and instant gratification with longer-term benefits and sustainability.
The growing success of small solar applications such as the solar landscape and walkway marking lights you now see everywhere are an illustration that if the right products are produced balancing instant gratification with sustainability, people will buy them.
Solar-powered roof vents are growing in popularity, as are domestic solar systems to power lighting. As well as being clean energy and independent from the grid, solar is typically cheaper to install when hardwiring is required over distance.
Small, task-specific solar is generally cost effective. Full blown domestic roof top solar systems are still expensive, but are likley to attract increasing government subsidies in years to come.
To illustrate the applications of solar, you can now use it to power Wi-Fi networks for internet access. For example, Meraki Networks of California, recently introduced two new products; Meraki Outdoor and Meraki Solar. Working together these can create wireless Wi-Fi computer networks covering entire neighborhoods while being powered by the Sun.
The Meraki Outdoor component is mounted on the side of your house or on top of a pole and as standard can transmit a signal up to 700 feet. (This can be boosted to 6-14 miles using an additional antenna).
The Meraki Solar component includes a solar panel and battery pack for night-time use and back-up power, so the network can be installed without power grid electrical connections. The wireless connections from Meraki Outdoor to home wireless networks are made using Meraki’s Mini.
The costs are very reasonable. Meraki Outdoor is $99 and the Mini $49. For the solar power accessory Visit Meraki at http://www.meraki.net
Small application solar is a step forward in familiarising consumers and businesses to the idea that energy doesn’t have tocome from the grid and can be emission free.
Cotinued success of small solar in the market should drive innovation and lead manufacturers to invent and develop more solar solutions.
Environment Friendly Outdoor Lighting Choices
Filed Under Environment Friendly Outdoor Lighting, Outdoor Lighting Tips | Leave a Comment
Unfortunately, not all exterior lights are night sky friendly, neighbor friendly, wildlife friendly and environmentally friendly.
In fact and sadly, most outdoor lights in use today are environmentally unfriendly. The reality is most homes and businesses use outdoor lights that are night sky unfriendly, neighbor unfriendly, wildlife unfriendly and environment unfriendly.
Why?
I think it’s simply a question of awareness and only recently with the publicity about climate change and a growing awareness of energy comsumption arer people evaluting the impact of their lifestyle choices.
- Most outdoor lights waste money and cause night time light pollution by generating light that shines straight up, or worse shine into a neighbors window.
Here’s a test for when you go home tonight. Turn out all the lights in your home and then open all the blinds. This will let you notice how many of the walls of your home have light shining on them from a neighboring home or business. This is called light trespass.
Fortunately, unfriendly outdoor lighting is actually an easy problem to fix - you simply turn the lights off and the problem goes away! And the benefit is you’ll also save money.
If you can’t keep your exterior lights off all the time there are still improvements to be made by making use of motion detectors.
- Motion detectors monitor the surrounding area for activity and instantly switch the lights on when a movement is detected. This makes sure that the lights only come on when they are needed.
- You’ll still gain the utility your installed the lights for in the first place… all while saving a huge chunk of money and resources.
- Make your lights as energy efficient as possible. For homeowners, the best way is to switch from incandescent to compact fluorescent bulbs which will reduce your energy consumption by about 75%.
- Replace all your non-environment friendly light fixtures with environment friendly fixtures that keep light on the ground where its needed and most importantly keep it (a) out of the night sky and (b) away from your neighbors property.
Keep an eye on http://landscapeoutdoorlighting.com/ for information about environment friendly outdoor lighting and refer to the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) at http://www.darksky.org/about/ for environmentally friendly lighting fixtures.