The Consortium for Solar Lighting (CSL), a group founded by Sharp Electronics, Carmanah Technologies, Inovus Solar and SolarOne Solutions, has published a preliminary guide for system configuration in the industry.
The consortium was formed in early 2011 to accelerate adoption of solar lighting technology by developing specifications for commercial-scale lighting systems.
"Solar Lighting Recommended Practices: Introduction" is the group's first technical paper, and defines the process of selecting and configuring a solar lighting system to ensure it will operate reliably 365 days a year.
CSL says a gap in lighting industry standards exists surrounding the effective sizing of a solar lighting system, which can adversely affect the rate of solar adoption in the lighting industry.
The CSL believes that recommendations such as the introductory guide will help foster awareness of solar powered lighting and the applications where it is a viable alternative to conventional grid-connected lighting technology.
This "Introduction" document represents the first installment of the CSL Recommended Practices reports, which presents an overview of the Consortium's mission and discusses the emergence of solar lighting as a new category of outdoor lighting.
The paper then investigates current industry standards as they relate to solar technology and where the notable system sizing gap exists. Standards such as NEC, UL, CE and IES (among others) touch on a few aspects of solar lighting, but the CSL contends that no standard addresses solar lighting directly.
CSL's preliminary document presents solar lighting terminology and diagrams with the expectation that the practices can be readily adopted by municipal, government and commercial customers and specifiers.
The paper is available here:
