Common traps when buying solar lights
1.Shrunken configuration and overstated value
Some suppliers privately shrink products’ technical parameters and overstate specification agreed in contract and get more illegal profit, the behaviors are classic traps when buyers are purchasing solar lights.
The illegal businessman usually do something on components which buyers cannot judge quality with naked eyes, most on solar panel and battery, because we need to test and realize their real technical parameters by test machines. Probably some buyers have experience comparing different suppliers’ prices and astonishing their prices are largely different even their stated parameter are same. Generally speaking, their prices should be similar for same product from different suppliers, the difference should be 1-5% around maybe different manufacturing cost, like labor cost, sale cost and etc. If one is far lower than market price, probably their parameter is much overstated, parameters are fake. For example, you required 100W solar panel, they give price of 80W and real power is 70W, then they can 10W illegal profit. For battery, which has much more illegal profit.
Some customers buy 6meter 30W solar street lights, while lighting effect is totally different, suppliers may told the light is 30W and LEDs has more than 30W, while buyers do not know the output power value, you can find that your light is not 30W brightness and last less rainy days than others’.
2.confuse different concepts
Confusing different concepts, specially on battery, what we need to get is electricity capacity from battery, it is WH, which means the battery supplier LED lights with a rated power(W) in hours(H). while most customer are care about capacity(AH) and can dishonest suppliers mislead customers only paying attention on AH and ignore voltage value.
Power(W) = Voltage(V) * Current(A)
Electricity(WH) = Voltage(V) * Current(A) * Hour(H)
Electricity(WH) = Voltage(V) * Capacity(AH)
It should be no big problem when we use lead acid gel battery since most gel battery is 12V, we just pay attention on capacity. While it became a little complicated on lithium battery, for 12V solar system, NCM is 11.1V and LFP is 12.8V; low voltage system, 3.2V LiFeO4 and 3.7V NCM, even some supplier provide 9.6V LiFeO4 battery. So the voltage is changing, we need to care about voltage value as well and make sure electricity output has no shrink.
For example, 11.1V 30AH NCM battery pack and 3.2V 80AH low voltage LFP pack, you can see 80AH is has larger capacity than 30AH, even more than double times. We compare their electricity and get that that’s not correct.
11.1V * 30AH = 333 WH
3.2V * 80AH = 256 WH
It is easy to know 11.1V 20AH has more electricity, so we need to compare WH instead of AH.
3. cheating on workmanship and materials
If we say overstate behaviors has walking in legal grey zone and playing edge balls, cheating on workmanship and material is not law red line.
Solar Panel: using low efficiency solar panel to fill up size, but power is not enough and its lifespan is shortened. Whats more, some use invalid solar panels to fill up size, the filled size has no power at all.
LED street light: use low power LED as large power LED, for example, some suppliers use 0.2W~0.5W 2835 or 5730 SMD pretended as 1W LED, use low brightness LED chip pretended as high brightness SMD, use low quality housing and etc..
Battery: For lead acid battery, some experienced clients maybe weight the battery, while some bad suppliers fill sand and glass in the electrolyte, also some battery manufacturer use bigger size case pretended as large capacity battery.
Street pole: usually on thickness of pole, diameter and material of steel, some bad quality steel and non hot dip material and etc...