Abstract
Recently, the electrical power suppliers try to meet the increasing demand on the electrical power in one of two ways. Firstly, through using renewable energy resources like solar energy and wind energy. Secondly, through effective managing the electrical power such as reducing the losses through using new approaches in technologies. This project introduces two approaches to effectively reduce the electrical power used in street lighting through auto control intensity of the street light.
The intensity of street lights is required to be kept high during the peak hours. As the traffic on the roads tends to decrease slowly in late nights, the intensity can be reduced progressively till morning to save energy. Thus, the street lights switch ON at the dusk and then switch OFF at the dawn automatically. The process repeats every day.
One way to achieve this is to use a power electronic circuit consisting of a thyristor and its control circuit. This circuit will be installed on the street light cable and by controlling the firing angle of the thyristor, the intensity of the street light will change.
The second way to achieve auto intensity control is through using white Light Emitting Diode (LED) where intensity control is possible by pulse width modulation.. The electrical source that is used here will be solar cell
Arduino programmable microcontroller is engaged to provide different intensities at the different times of night using PWM technique in the two projects.