Lighting Live Annual Conference 2025 | Speaker Spotlight 'Peter Diamond'
Peter Diamond is the Chairman at Pudsey Diamond.
Peter is a familiar face in the lighting industry, having run Pudsey Diamond Engineering Ltd for over 40 years. He is a practical, hands-on Engineer, happiest when resolving problems for customers or developing new products. Peter’s first involvement in Solar lighting was the” Solaboll” traffic bollard, which, when it was launched in 2011, won several national awards.
Peter has given many cautionary talks over the years about solar lighting, but as LED development and battery technologies have moved forward, now is probably the time to understand this complex science. Peter is a competitive sailor, so he understands a bit about weather, the anathema of any solar system.
Peter's paper is titled “Can a solar lighting system be resilient enough to work all year round?”
Local Authorities are being forced to look at alternatives to grid connection, and the industry has done a bit to assist here, but Solar lighting at 50+ degrees above the equator is challenging, and reliability is key. However, the knowledge within the industry, in the presenters’ view, could be improved by using available data to determine the resilience of systems before purchase.
Sadly, some systems have been oversold and have not delivered the system resilience that is needed, as whilst the knowledge within the academic arena has been available, it has not been visible to the busy Consultant and/or stretched Lighting Engineer. These are the people who are tasked with delivering a technology that is challenging to engineer in seasonal conditions where nights can be 16 hours in length and the real replenishment harvesting period is at best about 4 hours - and that is on a good winter's day!
This presentation introduces a free software portal developed by a group of European universities. It’s based on the last 15 years’ NASA satellite weather data that views cloud cover over the western world. The information is in the public domain and is accessible to all. It was intended to maximise the economic effectiveness of solar panel arrays for electricity generation on houses, to optimise battery storage systems for domestic demand.
It can also be used to calculate the effectiveness of stand-alone systems such as a solar-powered streetlight. The system relies on calculated solar irradiance figures throughout the year, collated for most of the western world and as PDE have collected their own data over many years, we can confirm the validity of the data within the obvious norms of high - and low-pressure systems that pass over our Island. From this data input, it is then possible with some accuracy to confirm whether a proposed solar lighting system will actually work.
Further, what is the maximum wattage and duty cycle the luminaire can be run at in the various seasons? The winter period of 6 weeks before and after the December solstice might appear to be the riskiest, but seasonal storms in the spring can have a significant effect on the climb out of the darkest months when the double whammy of maximum length of winter nights and minimum direct sunlight have stretched the battery capacity to its limits, and in many cases beyond.
Lighting Live Annual Conference takes place 18th - 19th June 2025
Attend the Annuahttps://lightinglive.org.uk/2025annualconference/l Gala
Thank you to our Event Partner: Street Lighting Supplies & Co. Ltd
Thank you to our Headline Sponsors: Charles Endirect | Orange Tek | Urbis Schréder | C.U. Phosco | Signify | Lucy Zodion
