NATION

Solar Powered Street Lights Light Up Nailaga Village

Nailaga villagers in Ba are overjoyed with the solar powered street lights that have brightened their village at night. The once dark Kings Highway that runs through the village, home
02 Feb 2018 11:00
Solar Powered Street Lights Light Up Nailaga Village
Staff of Clay Engineering doing the final touches to a Solar Street light in Nailaga, Ba. Photo: Waisea Nasokia

Nailaga villagers in Ba are overjoyed with the solar powered street lights that have brightened their village at night.

The once dark Kings Highway that runs through the village, home of the late Marama Na Tui Ba Adi Laite Koroirua is now lit up.

The lights have also brought in a sense of security for villagers and have made it safer for them walking along the highway at night.

This has been part of the upgrade of the public lighting system being undertaken by the Fijian Government through the Fiji Roads Authority (FRA).

A villager Samuela Nasokia, 52, said, “The village has never been bright like this before and the whole village shares these same sentiments.

“We can wander around well into the night with lighting from one corner of the road to the other.

“It has been long overdue and we sincerely thank the Government for bringing these developments to our door step.”

Fiji Roads Authority acting programmes manager electrical Musheer Khan confirmed yesterday that the project is in its commissioning stage now.

According to Mr Khan, the project took around 22 weeks to complete from manufacturing delivery to actual installation.

“This is the first of its kind for FRA. Solar streetlight uses 60 watts LED streetlights with four valves regulated sealed lead acid batteries,” he said.

“It has a 500 watt solar panel and an intelligent charge controller.

“The streetlight turns on as the sun goes down and turns off when the sun comes up. The system has an autonomy of 4.3 days which means that it will operate for 4.3 days without the batteries being charged by the Sun, dependent on the sunset and sunrise time as it has a daylight sensor,” he said.

Meanwhile, FRA confirmed that around 42 solar streetlights will be installed at various locations on Vanua Levu.

Edited by Mohammed Zulfikar

Feedback: waisean@fijisun.com.fj

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