Solar street lighting is a unique opportunity for sustainable recovery

With economic and climate resilience plans taking a more concrete shape across the globe, Signify believes that solutions such as solar lighting pave the way for countries to build back better. 

According to Allied Market Research the global market solar energy was $52.5 billion in 2018 and is set to grow to $223.3 billion by 2026, vastly accelerating the scale of renewables. One of the fastest growing solar street light.Signify advocates specifically for the wide adoption of solar and all in one solar street light which will not only help improve road safety, but also pave the way to lower emissions and eliminate the need for extra power stations to power the street lamps. This is particularly useful in more remote areas where existing infrastructure is minimal. With the strain taken off power stations, excess capacity could be diverted towards supporting charging stations for electric vehicles.According to Antonio Espada, head of public segment in Europe for Signify, solar panel street light is the best of both worlds. It uses sunlight to charge its batteries and on cloudy days seamlessly switches to electricity from the grid. It’s highly energy efficient and increases the use of renewables and balances electricity loads. The battery power can be used during peak hours so fewer power stations are required.Even before Umeme cut the power, most roads in this city of 870,000 near the source of the White Nile lacked illumination: Only the colonial-era center of town was equipped with solar garden light, and many of these had begun to sputter out due to age and poor maintenance. Districts that had grown as unplanned areas on the outskirts before being incorporated into the city had never been lit at all. “The area in the city that is planned is quite small,” says Kennedy Kibedi, a social media marketing specialist who works in tourism in Jinja City. “On the fringes of the city, in the suburbs, there’s a lot of informal development.”The Kampala Capital City Authority began revamping that city’s street lighting with solar-powered equipment in 2014, when just 115 kilometers of 1,200 kilometers of roads in Kampala had street lights, and only a fraction of those were operational. By 2016, when Jinja City was grappling with its power cut, the success of Kampala’s program was already apparent. Reports published that year show that the new solar spot light had reduced energy usage and costs, decreased traffic fatalities and accidents, and helped foster a more vibrant night economy in the capital city.