Solar For Urban

Solar For Urban

The sun is a clean, sustainable source of energy. It can provide direct heat and light, generate electricity, and provide solar heating and cooling. In fact, the sun’s power to provide renewable energy even extends to its role in creating winds that are harnessed for wind power and growing plants that provide bio-fuels.

Solar panels make it simple and affordable to adopt solar power no matter where you live or what your budget is. And if you want to help bring back clear skies to our urban areas, solar panels will help. They don't produce any harmful emissions and panels also reduce the overall amount of energy needed for every building they power.

Most solar cells are made of silicon. Solar panels, also called modules, are each made of several solar cells, connected together and sandwiched between protective glass and a backing plate, the whole panel usually surrounded with an aluminum frame. All the tested panels have 60 cells except the Sun power which has 96. The solar panels we’re testing weigh around 18 to 19kg each. A typical installation includes several panels connected together in an array.

This is simply a measure of the panel’s electricity output (in watts) compared to its surface area. Generally, the higher the efficiency, the more power you can get from a given roof area, and you might have lower installation costs too. However, if you have plenty of roof space, you might find it more economical to buy cheaper panels with lower efficiency and just use more of them.

This may come as a surprise, but although solar panels are meant to sit on roofs in direct sunlight, they actually become less efficient as they get warmer, due to the physics of the photovoltaic effect. So you’ll sometimes get less power from the panels on a very hot day than on a mild day (and remember, even on a 25°C day, your rooftop panels could be operating at well above 40°C).

We design solar powered LED lighting solutions for various applications including pathway, parking lot illumination and for the public transit and outdoor advertising industries. PV-Shelter and PV-Stop commercial products offer innovative and reliable solar LED lighting solutions for almost any lighting requirement including transit, transportation, aviation, parking lot and pathway applications.

At Urban Solar we pride ourselves on our high performance, high quality, reliable solutions, and innovative designs.
The sun can also light up the night, as solar-powered lighting solutions are available for a variety of applications around the farm and garden. From the small solar LED garden lights to larger units for illuminating entries, gates, and outbuildings, solar lighting can be a great fit for not only off-grid and remote locations, but also for the urban gardener and hobby farmer.

Gathering data for more optimal growing or watering is a crucial part of a large farm, and advances in remote monitoring devices have now made it possible to determine precipitation and soil moisture, analyze location-specific weather data, and more. Feeding and watering of animals can be monitored by remote solar-powered sensors, as can the reading of their electronic tags for precise tracking of movements.

Having the proper amount of ventilation for fresh air intake and hot air exhaust is an important element for greenhouses and animal enclosures, and solar energy can be used to power and automate those systems. The simplest versions use the heat of the sun to open a vent, which will then draw warm out via natural convection, but more extensive ventilation systems use an exhaust fan. The fan can be powered directly by the sun (fan runs as long as the sun is shining), or through a thermostat (fan only runs during the day when set temperature is reached), or even as an extension of a larger solar power system.

Solar-powered devices aren't just for the off-grid adventurers and power-hungry gadget-loving crowd, they're also quite useful in the farm and urban garden, as they can provide the juice needed to fulfill many basic functions for the small grower and farmer alike. Alternative energy has a long history on farms and ranches, beginning with windmills for water pumping and wind generators for electricity for remote locations. More recently, you'd also be more likely to see a small solar charger powering an electric fence than a PV array on a residential street. And with the advances in both solar technology as well as remote automation, using the power of the sun to run parts of a farm or garden operation is easier than ever.

Using an array of PV panels (or a single one) and a battery bank, solar power can be used in a very conventional manner on a farm, as a remote power source for any electrical needs. This type of installation isn't for those with a small budget (although a tiny system for select power needs can be affordable), but it has the advantage of being able to power a variety of things, with the only limitations being the size of the array, the capacity of the battery bank, and the extent of the wiring in place to route the electricity.

For the small-scale grower, or as an entry point for solar power, small standalone systems with PV panels, charge controller, and battery bank included, are available either as a package or can be built up from the wide variety of components now available.

Another fairly traditional use of solar power on the farm is a solar-powered well pump, especially for remote watering of livestock. A very basic setup can be as simple as a small PV array with no battery storage, which pumps water into a watering and storage tank only when the sun is shining. Adding battery storage and a controller to the unit allows for more control and more capacity, especially with wells with slow flow rates that may need to be pumped 24 hours a day.

Using the sun's energy to pump water from the ground into a reservoir isn't the only watering application possible, as some farms are using solar-powered irrigation to grow their crops. The most basic system uses drip irrigation attached either directly to the well pump, or to a storage tank that would gravity-feed the water to the rows.

Heating water by using the energy of the sun isn't nearly as high tech as generating electricity is, but it's just as necessary (and appropriate) in many farms. A solar water heater can provide hot water for washing or cleaning, and in some instances be used to heat the water for a radiant floor system for either people or animals. Indirectly, using water-filled drums or tanks that gain heat from the sun can be used in greenhouses as thermal mass, moderating the temperature and providing warmth when the sun is down.