Street light

[Camerous]

Being in Africa where solar business is just growing, I would like to put or build a street Solar light in front of my shop so that I attract solar customers to my business but the challenge I have I would like to build the street light at the least low cost, since my shop is located on a market street, so my question is how and what specifications of material such lights and panel should I use ?

[DanKegel]

Good question. My neighbor has mounted motion-sensitive battery powered LED lamps on a tree between the street and the sidewalk, and they're surprisingly useful.
So it's possible you could find a low cost solar motion-sensitive LED lamp that actually makes sense. Have you looked on Amazon to see what's available yet?

[Camerous]

Thanx for that info, but my point is to build one my self not buying,

[Mike90250]

You have to calculate how many hours you want the light on. 9
How many watts does it consume? 15
how many cloudy days till the battery fails 5
9x15 = 135 watt hours
x 5 days +2 spare days =945 wh battery size / 12V = 78ah battery
PV panel size to harvest 945wh in one 4 hour sunny day = 400w (includes 50% efficiency losses)
If you get more than 6 days in a row of clouds/no sun/no shadows on the ground, you must
start a generator or your batteries will be damaged from too deep of a discharge,

You can make things smaller/cheaper, but then your display sign goes dark and you loose customers
And of course, you must use good electrical wiring practice, fuses, charge controllers, water tight boxes....

2, 200w panels wired in series would work
a single 12V, 80ah deep cycle battery (flooded or AGM - not Gel)
Controller PS-MPPT-25 http://www.morningstarcorp.com/products/prostar-mppt/
Light fixture - depends what your needs are, 15W of leds would be pretty bright even at the top of a 25' tall pole

[Sunking]

FWIW tell Dan to go away. He knows nothing about solar or how it works. He is the house guest from hell who will not leave.Just spit on him and throw sand in his face and he will leave you alone. No one likes him.

There is no inexpensive way, its solar.

As Mike says you determine your watt hours, and that dictates the design. There is no cutting corners. If you go cheap on the batteries and controller, you will be buying new batteries every year.

Have you read the stickies? Tells you everything you need to know. Start with this one

[foo1bar]

Being in Africa where solar business is just growing, I would like to put or build a street Solar light in front of my shop so that I attract solar customers to my business but the challenge I have I would like to build the street light at the least low cost, since my shop is located on a market street, so my question is how and what specifications of material such lights and panel should I use ?

Is it a strictly off-grid setup?
Or is there occasionally some electrical power available? (ex. 3 hours/day for your section of town, a different 3 hours for the other side of town, etc)
Do you need it to be all solar?
Or are you OK with running a generator for a little while every other day when it's cloudy?
Or do you run a generator once a day anyhow?

If you have a 2nd option for charging those batteries you can have smaller batteries (you don't need them to last through 5 stormy days) - and possibly smaller solar modules too. The downside is it will probably mean more equipment so that you can charge the batteries from generator or powerline power

[DanKegel]

Thanx for that info, but my point is to build one my self not buying,

It's still interesting to see what's being sold prebuilt. If people are buying it and liking it, and it's close to what you want, it might give you some ideas about things to build.

[jflorey2]

Being in Africa where solar business is just growing, I would like to put or build a street Solar light in front of my shop so that I attract solar customers to my business but the challenge I have I would like to build the street light at the least low cost, since my shop is located on a market street, so my question is how and what specifications of material such lights and panel should I use ?

You are going to need three things:
1) Battery. This is determined by what kind of light you have (almost certainly LED) and how long you want it to run.
2) Solar panel. This will be set primarily by your battery size and secondarily by total energy requirements (i.e. recharge energy vs average daily solar energy)
3) Lighting controller. This is a very specific type of charge controller that has an extra output to turn an attached light on or off at dusk.

This will certainly be more expensive than using a commercially available solar light, but if you have the money, go for it.