However, the first time I knew the concept of smart control with especially new request Zhaga socket was when Bangladesh governments put solar smart control system with Zhaga socket in their local bidding documents. Let’s have a look at it. The project name is PURBACHAL NEW TOWN PROJECT with it’s name as Supply and Installation of LED Solar Street Light ( Watch the video of the All-in-One Solar Street Lamp ) at Partial Road 111, 114 up to CBD in Purbachal New Town project (Lot-6). please see below screenshot of the bidding website information:

Tunisia Project Requirements

Supply, fitting & fixing of 60W Solar LED Street light Shade with Battery ( Please review case studies of street light fitting. ), MPPT Controller & IoT as follows

How does it come up with Zhaga (book18) socket for IoT receptacle in Smart solar street lighting?

A complete set of “smart control” specified solar led street light contains the following parts

COMPONENTS	PHOTO
Lamp head – LED street light Wattage: 15W~150W Optic Lens: Type II, III CCT: 3000K, 4000K, 5000K, 5700K CRI: >70/80/90 Dimming: Yes Rating: IP66 IK10 Lifetime: L70 > 100,000hrs
Lamp Controller with Zhaga socket(book 18) It helps largely reduce work load of street lamp management department, and improve working efficiency, therefore significantly improve energy-saving benefit of all society.
Solar Panels As per customers'project specifications, High Conversion Efficiency of Module (from19% to 20%), with superior cell technology and leading manufacturing capability Power Tolerance Guaranteed power tolerance from -3% / +5% ensures power output reliability Excellent performance under low light environments (mornings, evenings, and cloudy days) ZGSM Current Sorting Process All ZGSM modules sorted and packaged by amperage, maximizing system output by reducing mismatch losses by up to 2%
Lithium Battery Pack with MPPT charge controller – RS485 version The casing of the pack is aluminum. MPPT - With IoT remote control (RS485 interface, external communication module is required). Meanwhile the battery capacity is defined by the specific project.
Arm support 1 Meter Hot-dip galvanizing spray treatment
Mounting bracket for solar panel Carbon steel Q235, Hot-dip galvanizing spray
Gateway– LoRa WAN
IoT Platform Interface (Free of Charge) with map function, monitoring, dimming

How to select the solar panel and battery specifications for smart solar street lighting?

It depends on what the client want the dimming mode and the local environment such as sunshine hours per day on average and if there are too many rainy days all the way. While people often asks for working time at 12 hours, here we have a common dimming program is 4 hours 100% power + 4 hours 50% power +4 hours 30% power. Certainly you can change this program to what you want. Then we set the rainy days as 1 day and sunshine hours as 5 hours. In the end we calculate the system specifications for solar panels and battery capacity.

Solar panels

We’re recommending monocrystalline type because it has not only high efficiency to convert solar energy into battery energy but somewhat competitive prices compared to polycrystalline type. Quality comes first. Even type of polycrystalline is little bit cheap. There are options from 50W/18V to 200W/36V.

Battery(Lithium)

We prepared models from 18AH 12.8V to 78AH 25.6V for any kinds of projects upcoming.

Models of battery packs	Remarks
	SRNE brand is selected as our option of MPPT charge controller in our battery pack – BMS (Battery Management System) because of its reliability and endurance. With aluminum material for its housing, the heat can be largely diffused, which keeps the battery and MPPT charge controller in fine working environment and allow them longer lifespan.

IIt is so rarely used with Zhaga socket in solar LED street lighting that when it comes to such different and special requests from customers sometimes.

Moreover, we have a complete set of LED solar street light with such a smart control system (With Zhaga socket) in our showroom like the photo. It would be better for you and me to hold a meeting online so that I can well explain everything to your team. Only in this way we can understand each other better and it helps us get the tenders more smoothly in the future.

Have you found any issues or doubts after reading my blog? Anyway it shall be more and more popular in African markets and other places where there are much enough solar energy to equip their solar street lighting with “Smart Control System” in the next decades.