The application places of solar lights mentioned in this article are mainly in public lighting areas such as parks, residential roads, parking lots, squares, paths, and outdoor buildings. These areas have certain brightness requirements, but not too high. The flow of people is concentrated in 4 to 5 hours in the first half of the night. The lamps that need to be installed in these places have a lifespan of 3 to 5 years.
For exact global commercial solar lamp market statistics, please see this article: Solar lamp market guide.
According to our order statistics in the past 10 years, the current high acceptance of solar lights in the public lighting market is mainly concentrated in countries such as Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa. The main reason is the insufficient power supply in these places. In addition, the light and temperature of these places are very suitable for the application of solar energy.
Even in these countries, the public lighting market for solar lamps is just beginning. End customers are just trying to install solar lights to test whether the quality of solar lights can meet the requirements of public lighting.
Limiting Factors of Solar Public Lighting
According to ADNLITE’s experience, there are two main factors restricting the development of solar lamps in the public lighting market.
Instability of Solar Lighting
Solar lights cannot maintain stable lighting in long-term rainy weather. Moreover, as the battery power drops, the LED power will automatically and slowly decrease. If the customer has very high requirements for the brightness and stability of the lighting, the current solar lamp technology cannot meet it.
Price of Solar Lights
The cost of solar lights is several times higher than that of ordinary LED lights of the same wattage. Although the later solar lights do not need to consume electricity at all, the high cost of the early solar lights is also the reason why customers are discouraged
Of course, solar lights can be welcomed by some projects and have their own advantages. It requires no electricity bills and no wiring. Therefore, solar lights are more green and more intelligent. Click to view our another article: Benefits of using solar lights.
Solar Light Technology And Cost Variations
In the next 10 years, the technological development of the following 3 solar light components can make the commercial and industrial solar lighting market have a great development.
Solar Panels
10 years of development can increase the photoelectric conversion efficiency of solar panels by 20%. Installing a solar panel with the same wattage in a smaller size can greatly reduce the cost of the housing, and the cost of the solar panel itself can also be reduced. The new solar panel technology has more stable performance under temperature and light changes, and the overall power generation is higher.
Therefore, with the application of new solar technology, the cost of solar lights can be lower, the size is smaller, and the lighting stability is reliable.
Click to learn more about solar panels.
Battery
The arrival and popularization of new battery technology is undoubtedly the biggest driving force for the development of the solar lamp market in the future. Especially sodium battery technology. Sodium batteries will reduce the cost of solar lights by half or even lower, and are more resistant to low temperatures. As for the increase in the weight of sodium batteries, it has little effect on solar lights.
Currently commercial and industrial solar lights account for the largest percentage of battery cost. Depending on the battery capacity, it can account for 25% to 40% of the overall cost of solar lights. If you are interested, you can check our article on the price analysis of raw materials for solar lamps. Therefore, it is no problem that the application of sodium batteries can reduce the cost of solar lamps by 10% to 20%.
The low temperature resistance of sodium batteries can make more places suitable for installing solar lights. Customers in many places are just dissatisfied that solar lights only light up for a few hours in cold weather in winter.
Click to learn more about solar light lithium battery knowledge.
LED
At present, the LED chip has a color rendering index of 70-80, and the luminous efficacy is between 180 and 220lm/w. In fact, there is still a lot of room for improvement in this efficiency.
Here, we want to repeat the point we have mentioned in many articles: the greater the luminous efficiency of the LED chip, the lower the LED power required for the same brightness (lumen value), and the lower the solar panel power and battery capacity can be. In this way, the cost of the overall solar lighting can be lower. The cost of LED chips is not high, but it can greatly reduce the cost of solar panels and lithium batteries. Therefore, in the next 10 years, with the improvement of LED light efficiency, the cost of solar lights can also increase by a large proportion.
Click to learn more about LED chips.
Summarize
Due to the development of solar panels, batteries, and LED technologies, the cost of solar lights is expected to be reduced by 20%-40% or even lower in the next 10 years. The size of the housing carrying the solar panel portion can be smaller. In the future, there will be more places suitable for installing solar lights.