Smart Solar Street Lights – Lighting up Kuwait and Caribbean islands

From Victron Energy

It seems ironic that a company whose main role is to explore, develop and produce hydrocarbons should choose solar power for lighting at their headquarters. That is however what the Kuwait Oil Company has chosen to do, as their goal as one of the largest oil producers is to become a more sustainable and energy efficient company – a theme that seems to be growing.

Smart Solar Street Lights
EnGoPlanet Inc., is headquartered in New York. Their Smart Solar Street Lights are used in the Kuwait project, where 140 units have been installed. Petar Mirovic, CEO of EnGoPlanet tells me that the success of the project has interested other oil companies too, such as Saudi Aramco who are considering an installation of over 1,000 units in the coming months.

The lighting units use quality components. The solar panels are 24% efficient (about as good as you can get commercially) and the LED lights are among the best at 160 lumens per watt (lm/W). The more lm/W a lamp produces the more efficient it is.

A traditional incandescent light is around 15 lm/W, an energy-saving fluorescent bulb is around 60 lm/W. Easy then to see the attraction of solar power for free and lamps that are over 10 times as efficient as old fashioned bulbs – all which nicely meets companies requirements for improvements in sustainability and efficiency.

Add in EnGoPlanet choosing to use Victron Energy’s highly efficient, ultra fast MPPT Solar Charge Controllers, plus Victron batteries together with lighting options such as:

Wireless internet connection for remote control and management.
Smart Cameras.
Sensors for collecting various environmental data.
Mobile phone charging stations.
Well – that all sounds to me like a recipe for success!

Disaster and lighting relief
Hurricane Maria was the deadliest storm of the 2017 hurricane season and many places in the Caribbean were without power for months. In fact we’ve previously blogged about this where Victron products have been used to help these not so fortunate folks: Powering up after Hurricane Maria.

And now we discover even more Victron products have been used in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, this time with EnGoPlanet’s Smart Solar Street Lights. Antigua’s street light network was completely destroyed and EnGoPlanet, together with their partner, installed 30 of their Smart Solar Street Lights at the beginning of redevelopment – making them more independent from the power grid with lighting that will work during power outages and hurricanes. As Caribbean islands such as Antigua have so much sun during the year the units can be completely powered independently from the grid.

Conclusion
It’s always a pleasure to see Victron products being used in sustainable and meaningful projects.

Speaking to Petar Mirovic, CEO of EnGoPlanet he too seems to feel the same way and also tells me:

“We see large potential for growth in both the Caribbean and Middle East markets – and since we are using Victron Energy products we believe this will be a great opportunity for our companies to further develop our business cooperation.”

John Rushworth

Credits & Links

Thanks to Petar Mirovic for the information and images used in this blog. The headline image of this blog is a Solar Street Light installation in Oman. Others per their caption.

EnGoPlanet Website – https://www.engoplanet.com/

EnGoPlanet on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/engoplanet/

IMAGES:
Smart Solar Street light installation in Las Vegas
Smart Solar Street Light installation in Antigua and Barbuda