How To Find the Brightest Solar Street Lights

Planning out effective street lighting requires you to weigh multiple factors that affect the environment around your city’s streets. You need to ask yourself questions, like: How many light posts will be needed? Should you use solar lights or LEDs? What's the overall design and appearance of the area?

One big factor in your strategy is required brightness. It is not always easy to determine the amount of light needed to ensure that streets, roadways, parking lots, and highways are properly lit so that pedestrians and drivers have ample visibility.

Bright solar street lights ensure your public roadways are well-lit throughout the night. But how do you find the brightest solution? Here is an overview of what lumens are, what this measurement means for brightness, and how many lumens you need for your super bright solar street lights.

What Are Lumens?

Gone are the days when you need to look at the watts alone to determine how your lights will perform. Lumens have become the norm to include on packaging so that consumers and planners can truly assess how bright their lights will be. This applies to everything from house lights and lamps to street lights and flood lights.

So, what are lumens? Lumens (lm) are measures that tell you exactly how much light is coming from a bulb. They measure how much visible light there is from a specific light source. The higher the lumens rating is, the brighter the light will be. If you have fewer lumens, you will thus have a dimmer light.

When planning solar street light placement, power, and number, you need to know how many lumens your lights will need. The range for lumens varies for street lights and does not have anything to do with wattage. Lumens tell you the level of brightness and amount of light you will get from a street light.

What’s the Difference Between Lumens and Watts?

It is easy to confuse lumens and watts. In the past, the brightness of bulbs was assessed solely on their wattage. Watts measure the amount of electrical power a light bulb is giving off. They measure the amount of energy the bulb is consuming. Essentially, you are paying for the number of watts you use when you pay your electric bill.

One watt is a single unit of power. It is a rate that measures the transfer of energy being produced by a given object. This is why watts aren’t just related to lights, but also measure the energy of equipment like microwaves, refrigerators, and even small electronic devices like your computer or phone.

It is a common misconception that the higher the wattage, the brighter the light bulb — which became especially clear with the emergence of LED lights. With LEDs, it is possible to produce more light with fewer watts. This means that there is more visible light being emitted but with less energy. This is why LEDs are so common today — they save consumers money and still provide the same, if not better, effect. 

A new way to measure a bulb’s brightness has been required with these changes in the lighting industry. This is where lumens come in. With lumens, the higher the lumens the brighter the light. Lumens indicate the intensity of energy being emitted from a light source. The more intense the light, the brighter it will appear to the human eye. The two are directly related. Lumens are thus much more effective at telling you how bright a given light bulb will be.

Many people may be confused about what the new measures mean for their light fixtures. Here is a quick look at some watt-to-lumens conversions:

• A 100-watt incandescent bulb can be replaced by a light giving off 1600 lumens

• A 75-watt bulb can be replaced with a light giving off 1100 lumens

• A 40-watt bulb can be replaced with a light giving off 450 lumens

Because of the efficacy of the new brightness measures, manufacturers are now including lumens counts on packaging to indicate how much visible light energy the bulbs produce. This tells consumers and planners how bright the lights will be, making it easier to plan for a wide range of uses, including solar street lights.

Do More Lumens Mean a Brighter Light?

The answer is, simply, yes. Lights with higher lumen counts will be brighter than those with fewer lumens. Lumens indicate how the bulb will perform rather than how much energy it uses, and having more lumens doesn’t necessarily mean that there will be a higher wattage needed.

You need both the wattage number and the lumens rating to determine how bright the light will be and how much energy it will consume. Lower wattage and higher lumens mean that the bulb is fairly energy efficient and will be bright enough for your needs. 

While these considerations are important for interior lighting, it is also crucial to consider the lumens count necessary for larger illumination needs, like parking lots, parks, stadiums, and roadways. The more light you need for a space, the more lumens you will need to look for when purchasing solar street light solutions.

Can You Have Too Many Lumens?

Planning for your street light needs means understanding how many lumens produce your required brightness. While the more lumens you have, the brighter the light will be, there is such a thing as too many lumens.

For example, the sun gives off millions of lumens. That’s why you can’t look directly at the sun without damaging your eyes. There would be no way to use that kind of light strength in a manufactured light. Bright headlights in cars tend to have around 3000 lumens, and even those are not the most pleasant to look at directly.

It is technically possible to have too many lumens for street lights. However, manufacturers are not going to be making street lights with lumens that are going to cause harm, and street lights are created that are best suited to certain areas and situations.

How Many Lumens Do You Need for Solar Street Lights?

Street lights typically range from 600 to 12000 lumens. The latter option will be extremely bright and is best for large areas that need brighter lighting solutions. City planners may also want to use multiple fixtures in one area for even brighter results.

LED light lumens may range from 120 to 180 for lamp posts and reach up to 700 lumens for motion sensor lights. LED flood lights generally need to have more, often up to 1300 lumens. When you’re planning for larger areas, you’ll need more lumens for solar street lights. Highways and busy roadways may require from 6000 to 12000 lumens and residential street areas will need about 5000 lumens. 

Factors that will determine your lumens needs for street lights include:

• Type of streetlight bulb — LED, metal halide, high-pressure sodium, low-pressure sodium, narrow-band amber, incandescent, fluorescent, etc.

• The size of the space you need to illuminate

• How removed the space is from other light sources

• The length of the times of day the space needs to be lit

• The number of streetlights needed

• The type of streetlight pole or post you will be using

Using solar street lights allows you to take advantage of all the benefits of bright illumination but with significantly lower costs and maintenance. In fact, solar lights are 45% cheaper than other lights over 10 years, since they help you save on energy and installation costs.

Greenshine Provides Better Solar Street Light Solutions

Incorporating solar power into your street lighting solutions is a wise choice for many reasons. You don’t have to worry about trenching since they’re completely off the grid and don’t use up any fossil fuels. And, maintenance costs are much less over time.

Greenshine New Energy provides decades of experience delivering better solar LED lighting systems to industries like government, military, education, Native American Tribes, cities, enterprises, and many more. We give you options for your solar street high brightness light needs based on your price point, design preferences, and brightness requirements.

We also have financing available thanks to our partnership with Balboa Capital, making it easier for you to gain access to the street light equipment you need for your projects now.

Our solar street lights have galvanized steel poles and can stand up against harsh weather conditions and even traffic collisions. Our Greenshine Smart Power Technology is incorporated into our PV panels for optimal electricity delivery into the LED fixture and battery. Our street lights also come with deep-cycle gel acid batteries that can hold up to five full days of autonomy. This makes these lights the perfect option for the dark of winter, and the average lifespan of the batteries is seven years.

To learn more about our solutions, contact Greenshine New Energy today.