Solar Roadway Lighting with SAM | Victor Harbor, SA

Background

As one of South Australia’s most popular coastal playgrounds, the City of  Victor Harbor [view on map] has been a favourite holiday destination with families since the late 1800s. With sun, surf and sand, clear turquoise waters and stunning views, outstanding early colonial architecture, and good pubs, cafés and restaurants it’s easy to understand why. At the same time, Victor Harbor has become one of the fastest growing local government areas in South Australia, maintaining a strong annual population growth rate over the past two decades. Growth of this nature demands continued investments in infrastructure and services and the City of Victor Harbor recently completed works for the upgrade of the Waitpinga Road / Battye Road intersection. Located approx. 5.5km SW of the town centre, the project increases safety for all travelers while supporting the growth in the Waitpinga area where residents overlook the spectacular Encounter Bay and Granite Island Conservation Park.

Solution

When it came to Street Lighting of this increasingly busy intersection, the Council found themselves with some challenges. The installation of traditional mains street lighting would require extensive trenching and overcoming a seam of hard granite that would significantly increase the cost. Given the Council is committed to practicing ecological sustainable development to enhance and sustain the natural heritage of the region, it was decided that alternative solutions should be investigated. Given past successes with solar roadway lighting projects in the Victor Harbor district, ranging from illuminating a black spot intersection at Swains Crossing Road to enhancing the Victor Harbor foreshore, boardwalk and bluff. Solar lighting has been a key consideration in the range of sustainable options that are available to Council to expand community assets without compromising environmental initiatives. The City of Victor Harbor undertook the research and identified the recently released GFS-Aspire solar light as a promising solution worth investigating.

Backed with funding from the Australian Federal Government, Green Frog Systems recently completed the development of the GFS-Aspire solar light as a modular, scalable and flexible solar lighting solution. The GFS-Aspire is powerful enough to achieve the Vehicle Category 5 lighting levels required for intersections and carriageways of this type. With the added advantage of being compatible with the newly developed Solar Activity Monitoring (SAM) software platform that enables centralised monitoring, management and control of these solar lighting assets from a remote location.

Outcome

Following extensive discussions between the City of Victor Harbor and Green Frog Systems, backed by certified illumination modelling to meet the required Category V lighting standard.

The Council determined the GFS-Aspire to be the most cost-effective V-cat lighting solution for this location. Since solar lighting was first introduced to the Council, they have consistently selected Green Frog Systems products for their outdoor lighting. The City quickly identified that the latest solar lighting technology provides equivalent performance to mains powered lighting with considerable savings on installation and grid connection and eliminates ongoing supply charges.

[VIDEO DESCRIPTION] Installation of  GFS-ASPIRE solar light. Modular, scalable design means the GFS-ASPIRE has flexible solar panel arrangements ranging from one solar panel (single-225W) up to three solar panels (triple-675W) as explained in this video. Other flexible options include the ability to utilise between 1-4 batteries inside the pole with no battery pairing required. This installation had 4 batteries per pole inside an 11.5m pole. The lighting levels achieved here were Vehicle Category 5 (v-cat-5).