Smart, Hybrid, Grid-Connected Exterior Lighting Systems.

Resiliency, Health, and Safety Building Decarbonization

Electric Power Research Institute, Inc.

Recipient

Palo Alto, CA

Recipient Location

13th

Senate District

24th

Assembly District

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$127,409

Amount Spent

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Active

Project Status

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The Issue

The vast majority of street, parking and exterior lights in CA are grid connected and operated in an ON / OFF function using photocells/ time clock combination and do not offer an alternate source of power in case of emergency such as PSPS events, and do not offer load shifting to help with the evening ramp. With the electrification of energy use in CA, electric vehicles may likely be adding significant load overnight during the same hours that exterior lights are operating. Since there is little renewable energy available at night, it is imperative that all nighttime load be decreased as much as possible or shifted to periods of high renewable availability.

Project Innovation

This project aims to design, develop and demonstrate a hybrid power (solar, battery and grid-tied) exterior LED luminaire system using a unique wrap-around solar panel with embedded sensors, controls and monitoring in the luminaire. Demonstration of this system intends to improve safety in parking lots in low-income communities and aims to benefit California rate payers via lower energy cost, reliable and adaptable hybrid, exterior LED luminaire with significant reduction in nighttime grid energy consumption.

Project Goals

Design, Develop and deploy hybrid (solar and grid-tied) LED area lighting system.

Project Benefits

This Agreement may result in ratepayer benefits through developing a product that can remove most of the exterior area lighting load from the grid. This may be especially useful during peak hours (5-9 pm) during winter, early spring and late fall. This should help utilities lower costs on overnight generation. If this technology is deployed for all outdoor lighting in CA, an estimated 4,000 GWh of electricity could be offset per year which equates to 132,000 tons of CO2 emission reduction.