There’s a revolution happening in the streets, and it has to do with power–not political power, but electricity. That’s right, cities, businesses, remote communities, and places everywhere have been taking advantage of the power of commercial solar lighting for many reasons. It may be the case you’ve seen a solar light in public in the past few years. They’ve grown in popularity for numerous reasons. Here’s why these lights that combine aesthetics and technology have been catching on the past couple of years.
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Why Commercial Solar Lighting is Catching On for Businesses and Cities
The Cost Benefit Ratio
By far, one of the largest benefits to commercial solar lighting is the cost-benefit ratio, especially when compared to typical outdoor lighting. A common outdoor light can cost around 2,000 dollars, while a solar light will cost around 3,000. The extra money for a solar light goes into the components that harness the solar energy and store it for use at night.
You might be wondering if a light is more expensive why the cost-benefit ratio is much better than traditional lighting. The true costs of solar lights are revealed when you examine how much they cost long-term. Traditional lighting needs trenching to build and connect an electrical infrastructure. The price to trench and build an electrical network for lights to operate can double the price of a traditional lighting system easily. That’s not the case with solar lighting. In fact, a solar lighting system saves, on average, about 20 percent of the original cost of traditional lighting. Sometimes, the savings can reach 40 to 45 percent of the original price! Why?
Trenching is outrageously expensive and requires special equipment, labor hours, wiring fees, and backfill fees to replace the pavement or soil removed. This doesn’t include possible permits that might be required for the areas such as easements or permission to dig under certain areas. The cost for trenching and wiring can add up quickly depending on what’s in the area.
With solar lighting, that’s not the case at all. Instead of using an electrical infrastructure located underground, the power is drawn directly from solar panels that convert photons, or units of light, into energy that is eventually stored in batteries. At night, the batteries supply the power to extremely bright, natural LED fixtures. Each light is self-sufficient and isn’t dependent on any series or parallel electrical networking, so power failures and outages are a thing of the past. Solar lights stay on all night, independent of any power source (except for the sun, of course), and provide incredibly clean, free electricity for public use.
Free Energy
Yes, we said free energy. With solar, wave goodbye to monthly energy or utility bills. Solar energy is drawn directly from the sun as it doesn’t use fossil fuels or leave a significant carbon footprint, unlike traditional lighting. Imagine the impact of each outdoor light in the entire world sapping the earth’s energy at once–it’s unfathomable how much energy is being used even in a single night!
To give you an idea of how much money you can save on energy, a conservative estimate of money spent per light in an entire system is about 20 dollars. In a 20-light system, the cost of energy alone over the course of a decade will cost 48,000 dollars.
Or, with solar, you can pay zero.
More than Just Free Energy
In addition to saving several thousands of dollars from trenching, wiring, and energy fees, there’s more in store. Solar installations have tax incentives and rebates available! For 2020, the solar investment tax credit is available for commercial installations. A whopping 26 percent of the total price of the installation is available as a tax rebate for solar lighting.
So not only does a solar lighting installation save you money, it earns money back as well! It’s difficult to gauge the total dollars saved and earned from a solar lighting project since every project’s total savings varies, but you can be certain that using the solar ITC will earn you significant money back. However, the ITC will eventually diminish to 10% for commercial installations in 2022.
Publicity
What’s interesting about solar lighting is that it tends to attract a lot of media attention! A lot of cities and businesses are getting noticed from news outlets just from installing solar for their streets. Not only does it save money, it also tends to attract attention, especially from green energy advocates and people bringing conservation efforts to light.
Solar lighting isn’t the “sole” answer to solving all of the world’s energy problems, but it’s a step in the right direction. If you’re interested in considering the switch to solar lighting for your business, Greenshine New Energy can be your solar lighting guide for the 21st century. We have a combined knowledge of 30 years under one roof in Southern California, the United States’ capitol of solar energy. Let us know how we can reduce your massive lighting bill and our solar experts can prepare a quote for you, free of charge.
Be sure to consider solar for your next lighting installation. It’s a really bright idea.
