Why to use Astronomical Timer.

Benefit of astronomical timer for street lighting systems

Now a day cost of producing electricity is rising,simultaneously users are increasing as cities are expanding.New electricity generation plant installation costs are very high. Hence our electricity mfg. is not coping up with demand. So in such a condition optimum utilization of energy, and preventing wastage is must. Energy conserved is energy produce.

In our observation in industries and city lighting systems, we found street light operation very complicated & difficult as Sun set & sun rise timings varies season to season. Street light ON hour varies from 9.00 hours (during summer ) to 13.00 hours (during winter). Ordinary electromechanical and digital time switches are incapable of taking care of such annual variation. For entire year sunrise and sunset time changes by about 3 hours (i.e 180 minutes). This quiet big variation can served if we operate street lighting operation with the sunset and sunrise changes. Also it will provide better lighting services over conventional systems. Ideal street lighting hours are 4050 to 4100 per year. We have found more than 75 % of street light switching operation are done manually and rest are done by electromechanical timer. In both the case operations of street lighting does not efficiently cope up with sunrise and sunset time changes.

In India majority street lighting timers are reprogrammed for time setting every 15 or 30 day basis. (If we adopt for 15 days time setting systems then total 30 minute per day and if we go for monthly time setting systems then total 60 minutes per day we have to compromise.) That will leads to a huge wastage of power.

If we calculate for one point of 15 kW then only 30 minutes of daily saving in energy can save Rs.10, 800/- annually. Unit rate calculated at Rs. 4/- Per KW/Hr (Total 30 minutes per day X 360 days / 60 minutes = 180 hours. 15 KW equals to Rs. 60/- hours.