Development of a solid state distributed lighting system for rural energy efficient applications

Abstract

The electrical supply utility, ESKOM, cannot cope with the growing demand in South Africa. This results in load shedding and power outages. This capacity can be augmented, by conducting energy audits, retrofitting government buildings, designing and installing cost-effective lighting systems, and using renewable energy sources in rural areas. Households in rural areas depend on candles and paraffin lamps to supply light at night. Solar panels as renewable energy sources are very expensive in conventional lighting systems. The problem is that a cost-effective, affordable lighting system has not yet been designed. The following four projects have been completed by the author: - Software development for a lighting design in general - Efficient high bright light emitting diode (HB-LED) lighting system - Energy audit and retrofit of the Nuwe Hoop School in Worcester - Optimization of hybrid solar-diesel system Firstly, the author wrote a program that is used in lighting designs. This illumination software is utilized for educational purposes. A manual step-by-step lighting design procedure was compiled. The JAVA object-oriented programming language was used to write the code of the design software. Real life design parameters are fed to the program, to confirm proper implementation. The software package will perform illuminance calculations to display relevant Isolux diagrams for educational purposes.