This report provides a detailed exploration of China's role in the solar street lighting sector, from its market share and export dominance to technological advancements and government-backed initi.
Are solar street lights a solution to China's low-carbon city construction?
Furthermore, given its extensive resource reserves and clean utilization, renewable energy also holds the potential to mitigate the GHG emissions of roadway lighting; solar-wind hybrid street lights (SWHSL), solar street lights (SSLs), and wind street lights (WSLs) are solutions to China's low-carbon city construction.
Although PV panels and wind turbines installed on street lights enable onsite electricity generation, the use of renewable energy is quite limited, and urban roadway lighting in China still relies heavily on municipal electricity supply.
It can be seen from the above statement that the power sources of the street lights in the 662 Chinese cities are primarily determined by each city's specific availability of solar and wind energy resources. Municipal electricity will compensate for any energy demand by street lights that cannot be met by renewable energy sources.
As a result, the comprehensive sustainability assessment is a big issue in the feasibility study of solar based street lighting systems. The feasibility study of street lighting system based on energy saving analysis and economic feasibility have been highlighted in a number of research projects,,, .
In China, lighting energy accounts for 11% of the country's total electricity consumption (Wang and Qi, 2010). As China is rapidly urbanizing, the number of street lights has doubled in the last decade, increasing from 12.8 million sets in 2006 to 24.2 million sets in 2015 (MHURDC, Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of China, 2017a).
The present paper investigates and compares the economic feasibility of two types of systems: islanded and grid-connected system, for the street lighting systems in Hunan Province, China. Based on two options of solar panel materials, a simulation model of the system is developed for economic, technical and environmental feasibility.