Educating Children about Energy Saving Lighting

Hawaii is a beautiful island that everyone dreams of visiting. The cool breeze and pristine water make it an ideal holiday destination but of course there are those who get to enjoy these pleasures every day since they live there. There are families just like in every other community and with that comes various utility needs.

Electricity is the most important one of them all since it is used for many different functions. Children go to school and they require lighting for the streets. Since the island is a little far from the mainland electricity in Hawaii is very expensive. This leads to too much money being used on electricity and lighting instead of on other more important projects.

Kapolei Middle School

The Hawaii State Department of Education decided to change this by rolling out a program for installing solar lighting in the schools to cater to their lighting needs. The lights were professionally done with customized ocean blue fixtures as per the DOE’s request. The project that was recently completed is the Kapolei Middle School project.

Pathway lighting with powerful LED lights were installed. The specific lights used for this project are the Brighta 30W solar pathway lights from Greenshine New Energy as requested by the DOE. These lights can produce 3300 lumens, an equivalent of the light that you would get from a 120-150W HPS fixture connected to the main grid. It uses much less energy for the same amount of light produced.

LED lights are known to last for 10,000 hours which is about 10 years or so. This means that there will be no replacements during those 10 years which is in itself a saved cost. The other important thing to note is that these are solar powered lights and therefore they do not require to be paid for at the end of the month. The sun provides its radiation for free and it is converted to electrical energy in the solar light to power up the bulb when required. That accounts for a lot of savings for the school.

Lots of savings for further development

The money saved in this project will allow the school administration to take on other important projects in the classroom like hiring more teachers and buying more materials required by the students. The school will definitely be able to sustain itself and this will by all means improve the quality of education provided in the region.

The children will not only benefit from the light. Children are very perceptive and are able to tell the difference between how it used to be and how it is now. The change to solar pathway lighting is already teaching them about alternative and more sustainable lighting options since Hawaii has plenty of sun, how to make energy savings and also conservation of the environment since solar lights cause no pollution.

That is another way of raising the next generation that will continue to be ambassadors of the green revolution since they will have experienced its benefits first hand. Hopefully this will lead to it being adopted around the world.

For more information about solar lighting, please visit http://www.greenshine-solar.com/