Christmas lighting on HOA Island

[JayhawkBill]

Commercial power failed on our HOA Island. Could be quite expensive to re-run. In trying to find the appropriate equipment to power our incandescent tree lights and wreath. Also a spotlight on our HOA name on a rock wall there. Cheap systems we tried are not bright enough at all. I'm a rookie at this... Any suggestions would be appreciated! Thanks...

 

[Nobodybusiness]

Commercial power failed on our HOA Island. Could be quite expensive to re-run. In trying to find the appropriate equipment to power our incandescent tree lights and wreath. Also a spotlight on our HOA name on a rock wall there. Cheap systems we tried are not bright enough at all. I'm a rookie at this... Any suggestions would be appreciated! Thanks...

I got more questions than answers.

Are you saying you lost power to a whole island of houses?

Does HOA mean something other than Home owners Association?

If you cut the power line on a common area can’t they fix that?

 

[JayhawkBill]

I got more questions than answers.

Are you saying you lost power to a whole island of houses?

Does HOA mean something other than Home owners Association?

If you cut the power line on a common area can’t they fix that?

Thanks for responding. This island is actually a traffic island, dividing the lanes of a major street in our subdivision. No houses. Simply some spotlights for our monument signage, and then holiday lights on our pine tree...

The line from the pole runs about 500 feet before going under the street and up on the island. The break is somewhere underground. We've had an electrician with location equipment working on it, but the prognosis looks like a lot of money.

That's why we'd like to go solar if possible. There's an immediate savings of $300 per year in the power charge... and environmentally appropriate.

I'm the Homeowners Association president, trying to find the right solution for a very moderate amount of power. Nighttime only. But brighter then the low end systems.

Any thoughts?

 

[Hedges]

Select LED lamps that meet your needs. Ideally 12V; there are many for vehicles. Or 120V.
Determine W and Wh requirements. Then you can size battery, PV, possibly an inverter.

"incandescent" - if you must; will require several times as much power.
But I think 12V vehicle lamps will do well for illuminating something. Check Harbor Freight among others.

For seasonal use, AGM or FLA will do. If something is used 365 nights per year, possibly lithium (does it freeze there?), but if sized for 3 nights without much sun in the day, oversize AGM should be good for 10 years if quality brand (I use SunXtender and now FullRiver; the ones from Harbor Freight are small and cheapies.)

 

[OzSolar]

Any thoughts?

-WIthout knowing your nightly energy needs in kWH everything is just a guess.
-How much area do you have to spare? Solar panels are big. You may not have enough (any?) area to spare for a large enough solar array.
-Incandescent lighting uses 8-10x more energy than LED lighting. You'll have to rework your lighting system before you can even consider making solar work.
- Due to long nights and extended periods of cloudy days sizing a solar system for night time lighting that can run all night every night of the winter is pretty much impossible.
-Two to 6 hours after sunset is much more doable. If the HOA wants all night every night of winter solar isn't going to work for you.

 

[Rocketman]

What is your location? (Nearby big city is close enough). There is a big difference in amount of solar in Phoenix vs Seattle.

Yes you can probably do the lights by solar. It sounded like the island was on its own meter. If so, pull up the bills - how many Kilowatt - hours were used by month over the last year.

Also, do you need to keep the lights on every night all night long or if they occasionally died at 4am - would anyone care?

It may or may not end up being cheaper than replacing the old wire - my guess is it can be cheaper.

 

[LydMekk]

This thread is useless without pictures!

 

[HarryN]

The first step will be to switch the lights to LED to reduce the power consumption.

I am not sure what you have there, but I just put in some ecosmart LED spot lights from home depot into my off grid shop and they are pretty decent. In theory replaces a 250 watt lamp with ~25 watts. The labels usually lie but it does have a fair amount of output.

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In KS in the winter that means that you will need to power it from AGM batteries as Li will not work in that application. ( too cold)

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Assuming that:
- you do this LED spot conversion
- and the Christmas lights pull perhaps 100 watts

That is ~ ( 150 watts ) x (12 hrs ) ~ 2 kW-hrs

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To produce 2 kW-hrs in the middle of winter in KS, it will take ~ 1000 watts of solar.

Storing it will require ~ 4 each x 100 amp-hr good quality batteries.

Add in a commercial grade inverter and related items / weather resistance and you are looking at ~ $10 - 20K.

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If you convert all of the lights to DC then this can cut out some of the cost of the power system as well, but I don't think it will end up being much less than $10K installed no matter the approach, especially if you need to be code compliant.