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How to Choose the Best Commercial Parking Lot Solar Lighting

SEPCO 9/7/21 6:30 AM
Best Commercial Parking Lot Solar Lighting

Given the rapid increase of employees commuting to work, it is becoming a norm for businesses to have larger parking lots. Therefore, safety should be one of the business’s top priorities, and to achieve that is to provide lighting for the parking lot. There are certain factors to consider to get effective results and achieve your goal of providing the best solar parking lot lighting. Efficacy, efficiency, color qualities, light distribution, light power density, and light layout should be at the top of your list. As well as these, the benefits are a major factor too. You don’t want to miss out on high light quality, low energy costs, and lower maintenance costs.

 

Mounting Styles

To decide on where to place the lights is important as they have to be displayed effectively. Though pole light fixtures are commonly used, the lights can also be mounted on walls or landscaping. For pole light fixtures, the length of the pole matters a lot, as the higher the poles, the more expensive and difficult maintenance becomes. Therefore, you can choose to use brighter lights on fewer poles with high lengths, and the result is a more inviting parking lot.

Aside from the pole’s length, the distance between the poles should be another consideration. Parking lots vary in size as businesses have different needs. You can use the average parking lot light placement recommendations to come up with yours, depending on the size of your parking lot.

 

LED Parking Lot Lights

When it comes to lights installed on a commercial parking lot, you have to consider certain variables. Optimal distribution, light quality, low energy costs, and durability are some of the features of the best parking lot lights.

 

LEDs are more energy-efficient, accompanied by other benefits such as their strong durability. In addition, LED lights dim out over time instead of experiencing lumen degradation. Hence, their replacement takes time after installation, thus saves you replacement and maintenance costs.

 

Furthermore, LED lights are best known to operate in cold conditions. They also have design flexibility and can withstand frequent light switching. Therefore, go for LED lights as they will perfectly serve your parking lot.

Solar and Battery Storage

The battery is the storage for the solar energy harvested during the day in which will provide lights at night. Therefore, you must look for a solar panel strong enough to charge the battery. To achieve this, you have to look for a battery and solar panel with a large milliampere-hour (mAh).

 

The battery should also be powerful enough to operate at night for multiple hours. The battery to solar panel ratio and the luminaire energy draw will help you with this. With all this information, you can check on the solar panel's performance and the lights; hence, you can respond to any lighting needs. All in all, the best quality solar panel to absorb the sun’s energy is always the answer to bright lights for a parking lot.

Luminaire

A light fixture along with other factors are made to position, protect and distribute the light to provide optimum illumination for the parking lot. This provides safety and security to people as they come and go. Additionally, you can use guidelines, such as the IESNA, as your reference concerning the luminaires of your parking lot.

 

In addition to this is the luminaire efficacy, whereby the light output divided by power input gives you the overall performance of the luminaire. Therefore, it is always best to use high-lumen solar lights. Make sure the data provided for the lumen output is not raw led data but instead field-proven data that takes into account the drivers and optics used with the fixture.

Motion Sensors & Adaptive Lighting

For security purposes and conservation of the battery’s life, you can’t ignore this. Nearly all parking lots do not require illumination all night, from dusk to dawn. Having the ability to either use motion-sensing technology or adaptive lighting with dimming if off times are not an option. This helps reduce the system sizing and lowers the cost of the project.

Illumination Levels

Recommended light levels are measured in footcandles(FC). It is the basic unit for measuring the level of illumination; hence measurements can be taken using a handheld light detector. You can then know what recommended level of light applies to different use of lights. Moreover, with the measurements, you can know the amount of light the parking lot receives.

 

Color temperature is also important as it affects how light will appear on the parking lot. The bluer-white light of 5-6K fixtures allows for better visibility since it is closer to natural sunlight; however, it is not good in all cases. Now, most 4K fixtures provide almost the same lumen output as their 5K counterparts. In the end, 3K is used in areas such as parks or areas where you are looking not to bother the surrounding wildlife.

 

Light pollution is the final factor to take into consideration when looking at illumination levels. Making sure that uplight is all but eliminated and backlight and glare are also reduced makes sure that the lighting doesn’t disturb migrating birds and our neighbors.

 

Final Thoughts

Sometimes it can be hard for business managers to determine what solar parking lot lights to use. Unfortunately, though, parking lots are necessary for a business as they invite more customers and improve its security. Therefore, opting for a parking lot solar lighting for commercial use is the best, as mentioned above.

 

Author Bio: This article was written by Slaven Litera of Wizer Energy. Slaven and his team provide comprehensive Domestic and Commercial PV Systems installation services across Ireland.

 

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