Solar

Theme

Pho­to­voltaics Clean elec­tric­ity from sun­light

Producing light from light sounds strange at first. But solar luminaires, even in moderate climates, make perfect sense.

Our sun is with­out a doubt the most impor­tant source of energy for all life on earth: its light warms the atmos­phere, and enables the pho­to­syn­the­sis of algae and plants, it drives the water cycle, our weather and the wind. What could be more nat­ural than to use this inex­haustible and free source of energy in tech­ni­cal solu­tions? It takes the sun just a few min­utes to trans­mit as much energy to the earth as all of human­ity con­sumes in an entire year. Solar energy thus offers a promis­ing option to cover our civilisation’s energy needs in a solu­tion that is in har­mony with the envi­ron­ment and nature.

The chal­lenge lies in cap­tur­ing this energy, exploit­ing it tech­ni­cally and stor­ing it, because the fluc­tu­a­tion in light inten­sity during the course of the day is out of kilter with man’s energy require­ments. The best exam­ple of this is arti­fi­cial light­ing that is needed at night, pre­cisely when the sun doesn’t shine.

Sus­tain­abil­ity in a nut­shell. Aes­thetic and effi­cient

South­ern Europe is part of the ​“solar belt”: The regions that are ide­ally suited for solar energy due to their abun­dance of sun­shine. Selux solar lumi­naires, which are already estab­lished in South­ern Europe, are also ide­ally suited for the use in North­ern and Cen­tral Europe thanks to their effec­tive­ness and intel­li­gence as more energy is usu­ally gen­er­ated than is required. Our solar lumi­naires have an intel­li­gent con­trol system for light and bat­tery. In the months with less sun­light, a microcontroller’s algo­rithm ensures opti­mum energy man­age­ment.

Selux solar lumi­naires have a mod­u­lar design and can be oper­ated com­pletely inde­pen­dently: elec­tric­ity and devel­op­ment costs are elim­i­nated and instal­la­tion is quick and hassle-free for the sur­round­ing area. This makes the new lumi­naires par­tic­u­larly suit­able for appli­ca­tions where there is no power grid and envi­ron­ments that are sen­si­tive to inter­ven­tions – such as parks, cycle paths and hiking trails, remote bus stops or car parks, nature reserves, projects with an eco­log­i­cal role model char­ac­ter, tem­po­rary areas of use and for munic­i­pal­i­ties that want to become cli­mate-neu­tral.

Lukida

Serie

Series Overview

Lukida 4000–P200-160 Solar light column

Series Overview

Lukida 4000–P100-160 Solar light column

Series Overview

Valetta

Serie

Series Overview

Anatar

Serie

Series Overview

Anatar 4000-P100-160 Solar pole luminaire

Series Overview

Anatar 4000-P200-215 Solar pole luminaire

Series Overview

Anatar 8000-P200-215 Solar pole luminaire double

Series Overview

How do pho­to­voltaics work?

Solar cells are based on the pho­to­elec­tric effect that was dis­cov­ered by the French physi­cist Alexan­dre Edmond Bec­querel in 1839, which inter­ested many other great researchers includ­ing Hein­rich Hertz, his stu­dent Wil­helm Hallwachs and even Albert Ein­stein. In 1907, Ein­stein sub­mit­ted a quan­tum theory expla­na­tion as to why light gen­er­ates elec­tri­cal charges in cer­tain mate­ri­als. But it wasn’t until the 1950s that Amer­i­can lab­o­ra­to­ries pro­duced the first solar cells made from the semi-con­duc­tor sil­i­con with an elec­tri­cal output that could be used in a tech­ni­cal appli­ca­tion. In this case, the emerg­ing aero­space indus­try, but also as a decen­tralised power supply for tele­phone ampli­fiers, for exam­ple. The same elec­tric­ity that solar cells gen­er­ate can be used imme­di­ately, stored in bat­ter­ies or trans­formed into alter­nat­ing cur­rent and fed into the grid.

Sil­i­con as base mate­r­ial

Sil­i­con, the mate­r­ial used in most of today’s solar cells, is a semi-con­duc­tor. This raw mate­r­ial is common in the earth’s crust in the form of sil­i­con diox­ide (quartz, sand), making it avail­able in almost unlim­ited quan­ti­ties. Monocrys­talline, poly­crys­talline and amor­phous sil­i­con can be pro­duced from high purity sil­i­con. These base mate­ri­als are in turn used to pro­duce solar cells with vary­ing prop­er­ties. Solar cells made from amor­phous sil­i­con offer low effi­ciency at a cor­re­spond­ingly low cost; solar cells made from monocrys­talline sil­i­con may be more costly, but they are also more effi­cient. The right cell type depends on the spe­cific appli­ca­tion. Lumi­naires with a decen­tralised power supply require a com­pact design and high effi­ciency, which is why hei solar lumi­naires from Selux use highly effi­cient solar cells gen­er­ally made from monocrys­talline sil­i­con.

Nom­i­nal power and yield

The nom­i­nal power of pho­to­voltaic instal­la­tions is mea­sured in Wp (Watt-peak). Wp refers to the per­for­mance under test con­di­tions that approx­i­mate the max­i­mum solar radi­a­tion in Ger­many. These stan­dard test con­di­tions (STC), used to com­pare dif­fer­ent solar mod­ules, are defined as a cell tem­per­a­ture of 25°C, radi­a­tion of 1000W/​m² and an air mass of 1.5. A typ­i­cal PV-instal­la­tion on the roof of a family home (with 40m²) yields around 4 – 5kWp; the PV cells on a hei-solar lumi­naire from Selux have nom­i­nal power rat­ings in the range of 100 to 250Wp. Pho­to­voltaics are ide­ally suited to regions within what we call the solar belt, where there are high levels of solar radi­a­tion irre­spec­tive of the season. These include south­ern areas of Europe and North Amer­ica, Cen­tral and South Amer­ica, Africa, Asia and Aus­tralia. Pho­to­voltaics are also a cost-effi­cient alter­na­tive in neigh­bour­ing regions such as Cen­tral Europe, as has been demon­strated in recent decades. Sev­eral cities and regions in Ger­many and else­where are record­ing pho­to­voltaic yields in solar land reg­is­ters.

Finan­cial fea­si­bil­ity

Solar power is not only sus­tain­able from an eco­log­i­cal point of view, it is now also finan­cially com­pet­i­tive. Over recent decades, tech­ni­cal advances have improved the per­for­mance of solar cells, as well as other system com­po­nents such as invert­ers, con­trol and charg­ing elec­tron­ics and bat­tery stor­age. At the same time, the eco­nom­ics of scal­ing pro­duc­tion mean costs have fallen con­sid­er­ably: solar cell prices today are 90% lower than in 2010. In many regions with cor­re­spond­ing light inten­sity, pho­to­voltaics are already con­sid­ered the cheap­est way to gen­er­ate elec­tric­ity. In appli­ca­tions such as making road or path light­ing self-suf­fi­cient (»off-grid«), addi­tional fac­tors pos­i­tively impact eco­nomic effi­ciency and the eco­log­i­cal bal­ance sheet: not only are there no elec­tric­ity costs per se, nei­ther are there any line charges or wiring instal­la­tion costs.

Get in touch
We look forward to realise extraordinary projects with you.

Select Region and Language

Just like other websites, we use cookies to improve and personalize your experience. We collect standard Internet log information and aggregated data to analyse our traffic. Our preference and marketing cookies allow us to adapt our content and ads to our audience's interests.