Now that summer is upon us some of you are digging out those solar lights to put along the sidewalk again to make a nice shining light on your walkway. So you put them all in the ground let them charge the whole day only to find out that night that most of them don’t work and the ones that do are very dim and not doing much. Even though they don’t cost much who wants to go out every summer and buy new lights, I know I don’t.

A local park recently installed some solar outdoor bollard lights for their pathways around their park. These bollards light provide pathway lighting around the perimeter pedestrian walkway and add to the safety of this residential area. I wanted to provide you a good comparison of different style bollard systems for projects similar to this one.

  A city municipality in the greater Miami area turned to SEPCO to design a custom solar power walkway lighting system for a small park located in the middle of a residential neighborhood.  The challenge was to create strong enough illumination for the neighborhood residents to be able to enjoy and feel safe walking in the park during park's evening hours, yet not so much light as to disturb residents with homes adjacent to the park.

  Pathway and sidewalk lighting are great applications for solar lighting solutions. These walkways are often located in parks or generally off the beaten path. The electrical grid may not be available in these areas. Even sidewalks adjacent to roadways can present costly challenges related to extending the power grid for lighting purposes. Solar lighting can be used for lighting these walkways without the need of the electrical grid. Solar panels produce their own electrical energy that is stored in batteries which are used to power the lights at night.

  Bollard lights are popular in pathway and walkway applications that require low level lighting along a narrow area. These too can be powered by solar panels when traditional power isn't available. Large panel assemblies can power multiple fixtures with the solar power assemblies being fit into the surrounding landscaping, or there are solar bollard fixtures that have the solar panels fit into the top of the bollard. There are two major differences between these two applications; larger solar means higher powered lighting and smaller, built in solar panels provide lower power lighting.

  The West Colfax, CO Business Improvement District recently installed eleven SEPCO Promenade Series solar power lighting systems to illuminate walkways throughout its downtown district.  Beyond sustainability benefits, West Colfax was able to save a considerable amount of money in the sense that the off-grid solar lights did not require West Colfax to incur additional expense of tearing up streets/sidewalks as the means to extend AC-power grid to the solar lights. 

  SEPCO recently completed a solar LED walkway lighting retrofit project at a US Marine Corps Bachelor Enlisted Quarters. This installation allows for improvement on energy security and reduces current energy usage on the base. The new fixtures were selected to match the old lighting fixtures in design to fit the architectural integrity of the area and allow for more efficient LED technology to be used in conjunction with solar power. The project also allowed for lower costs by utilizing the existing light poles.