The two Florida companies will collaborate to develop solar-powered outdoor lighting fixtures for parking lots, roads and other areas. They note that traditional outdoor vapor lighting uses three times the energy of their technology.
Sunovia's lighting design uses mirrors to better manage heat and focus the light that its LEDs produce. The company indicates that its design uses 73 watts, lower even than competing LED fixtures' energy consumption. The solar-powered Sunovia-SEPCO design will store electricity generated by solar panels in SEPCO-provided batteries; at night, the batteries' charge will power LEDs to illuminate the ground.
Earlier this month, electrical manufacturers and environmental protection groups jointly advocated a new federal standard for outdoor lighting efficiency. Their proposal would both ban mercury vapor lamps - the least-efficient outdoor lighting technology - by 2016 and speed the uptake of LED outdoor lights.
The National Electrical Manufacturers Association estimates that lighting consumes 22 percent of the electricity generated in the U.S., with outdoor lighting representing 20 percent of that amount. Solar power in efficient lights could reduce carbon emissions significantly.
