Just as all technology evolves, urban lighting can quickly become redundant. Installations are quickly superseded with newer products, more powerful lighting, enhanced sensors, and longer lifespans.
Social attitudes are also changing, and modern homeowners and residents don’t just want to live in safe and pleasant developments. In addition, they prioritise factors, such as:
- Quality of living – green space, family-friendly zones and pedestrianised areas.
- Environmental responsibility – reducing emissions, by-products and waste.
- Social consciousness – living in ways that benefit all members of the community.
Lighting might seem like it plays a small part in the innovation of contemporary life. Still, it can be a fundamental decision factor between two urban estates – one with solar-powered, year-round illuminations, and the other with stalling street lights, dark alleys and unreliable power.
Let’s run through some of the challenges of modern urban development and why solar lighting is an integral part of the planning process.
Future-Proofing Urban Estate Lighting
One of the biggest challenges in street lighting, estate lighting and security lighting is that it needs to operate at high quality, without fail, for extended periods.
To demonstrate, we’ll evaluate some of the potential hazards with conventional urban lighting:
- Vulnerability to power outages. Now, in the ideal world, we’d all have 100% reliable electricity. Still, all South Africans will know that’s probably a pipe dream! Power shortages in darkness can be highly dangerous and make the streets feel unsafe.
- Accessibility to tampering. Security is a crucial part of what we do, and we recognise that fixed lights can be rendered useless by snipping wires, cutting off the power supply, or simple vandalism. Again, that can thrust a whole estate into darkness for days at a time, increasing risks and making it hard to walk at night.
- Running urban light networks can become prohibitively costly, particularly for private estate managers or development owners, looking at extensive charges for 24/7 lighting. Adding in maintenance costs, servicing, new bulbs, and you’re looking at a significant investment.
- Whether we’re looking at street lights, security sensors or parking floodlights, it doesn’t take much for a traditional installation to become faulty. That can be due to water ingress, extended winter weather, bulb failure, or general wear and tear.
Given how important lighting is to safety, navigation, security and convenience, it’s high time some of these outdated systems are replaced.
Solight takes all of these factors into consideration, and we’re pretty confident in saying that we’ve hit every marker, hands down!
The Effectiveness of Solar Lighting for Urban Developments
To keep it simple, we’ll explore each of those problem spots above and explain how solar lighting removes the problem and eliminates the pain points associated with managing urban lighting systems.
Continual Estate Lighting Reliability
Electricity can (and does) fail. However, the sun remains burning brightly, even when it’s hidden behind layers of cloud! Solar power isn’t just reliable; it’s FREE!
Using solar lighting in urban areas also hits all the aspirational standards homeowners look for – it has no impact on the environment, no detriment to ecology, and provides low light pollution solutions, improving sleep quality and general health.
Solight street lighting incorporates superior technology in each battery pack, allowing light levels to be adjusted according to the conditions. That improves each battery charge’s life cycle by over a week.
Failsafe Security Protection
We all appreciate that a lack of street lighting or security lighting poses a risk. Of course, there isn’t an actual threat in many cases, but the concern can cause a stress for people living in urban areas with no lighting after dark.
Solight solar street lights resolve the problem – because they are in action every minute of the day. The beauty of solar lights is that they require no groundwork. There aren’t any cables. They work autonomously from the grid and will still operate at full power, even if the rest of the neighbourhood is without electricity.
With no wires and an independent power source, solar street lights can’t be hacked, vandalised, or be cut off.
Low Urban Lighting Running Costs
Budgets remain a crucial element for estate managers and urban planners, and future-proof lighting technology must address cost concerns.
Our solar estate lights are proven to last for years at a time, without any replacement parts, no electricity costs, no manual interventions, and only a simple wipe down after bad weather. How do we guarantee that this cost-effectiveness translates into infallible performance?
The devil is in the details!
- Full IP65 waterproof accreditations, with a casing that can cope with any weather (take a look at the Atlas Street Light!).
- Advanced battery systems, including options like the lithium-ion battery on our Halo Landscape Light.
- Robust aluminium alloy materials, available on the wall-mounted Uranus Solar Barn Light with a polycrystalline solar cell.
Each component is carefully selected for premium quality, exceptional reliability, and durability that will remain at the sharp end of technological lighting developments.
Professional Estate Lighting Efficiency
Last but not least, let’s talk about efficiency. Contemporary developments need modern urban lighting solutions, no question.
Future-proof technology is designed to last for years, be easy to manage, meet all of the critical performance factors you need, and have the capacity to remain in excellent condition during blazing hot summers and damp cold winters.
Solar lights are the first choice for many urban development planners because they provide the ultimate performance with the lowest cost. Installations are fast, there is no drilling or cabling, and the estate can benefit from enhanced lighting and improved security in just a couple of hours.
Solight is proud to be leading the market in supplying these innovative lighting solutions, using components and parts that won’t quickly be outdated and with professional-grade battery packs designed to stand the test of time.
Interested in learning more about your upgrade options? Visit our Estate Lighting, Security Lighting or Landscape Lighting ranges online for more inspiration.
