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Location: Five public park locations across the City of San Marcos, located between San Antonio and Austin, Texas, USA
Products: PowerStack M80 (25ft) vertical solar poles, powering an LED luminaire and LTE-M router for wifi connectivity, for solar powered park wifi networks and lighting.
Date/Year: Installed in 2024
Project Partners: BrightWatch, City of San Marcos
The Challenge: The City of San Marcos IT department had a target to deploy enhanced amenities for several public parks across the city.
The team was tasked with delivering additional lighting and new public wifi connectivity points at 5 different locations. Ideally the solution would be sustainable in nature. An additional requirement was that, where possible, the solution could be installed with minimal disruption to the surrounding area.
The parks were existing operational sites, so the City team didn’t want to shut down access to allow for heavy vehicle access and grid electricity extension with disruptive trenching and cabling processes.
As a result, they were looking for something that would fit in well with the parks’ aesthetics and could run reliably without any connection to traditional electrical supply.
The City’s IT department contracted BrightWatch to come up with a solution.
The Solution: BrightWatch suggested PowerStack to the City of San Marcos team. As a fully-integrated, 100% off-grid solar power pole, the PowerStack system could be installed without any of the disruption, time or costs associated with extending traditional grid supplied power to the 5 locations. This solution would create solar powered park wifi and area lighting posts, that would meet the projects goals for sustainability and enhanced amenities for park users.
BrightWatch worked with PowerStack to design a system that could reliably power nighttime illumination and the chosen LTE-M Routers. The luminaires chosen were a PowerStack designed product, with dark-sky compliant operation.
Five of the M80-4LP4, 25ft poles with 4 stacked solar panels on all 4 sides, were installed across the chosen locations. They use solar power to essentially create a ‘micro-grid’ for the attached devices. These micro-grids power the different functions of wi-fi network deployment and nighttime illumination on their relevant runtime profiles, without any reliance on external power sources.
The poles were installed with a concrete-free foundation option, which meant they could be installed in as little as an hour per pole, using just hand-operated machinery.
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Benefits: PowerStack was the ideal choice for this project as a green, 100% off-grid power supply for the desired infrastructure. While in this situation, there was existing electrical supply in the chosen locations they likely could have used, the team at the City wanted a sustainable power option.
By installing PowerStack systems, not only is the infrastructure powered in a way that doesn’t add additional pressure to the grid, but there were significant savings on the labor and time to install the poles, as compared to accessing traditional power supply.
Plus, without the need to use heavy machinery to dig up existing parking areas, parkland or pathways in order to cable in supply, PowerStack also represents a less disruptive way to access power.
Finally PowerStack is technology and brand agnostic, and comes with a sleek architectural finished look. This gave the BrightWatch and City of San Marcos team full choice over the router and lighting device they used, and meant the finished solution blended in neatly with the areas chosen for deployment.
”When we saw the project requirements, we knew PowerStack would be an efficient, (not to mention good-looking), way to get power to the park sites. A sustainable power source that could be deployed without digging up the park and disrupting access, it was the perfect solution for this project.”
PowerStack’s award-winning vertical solar design uses stacked panels on all 4 sides of the pole, which maximizes sun capture throughout the entire day.
It’s a more considered approach to solar power than the traditional flat angle panels, and creates a product that doesn’t have bulky dimensions, and produces the right amount of power for your application. This means PowerStack is as at home in urban and suburban surroundings as in remote locations.
Each system is recommended based on the following: the running wattage of your desired devices, the runtime of those devices, and the available sunlight hours for your chosen installation site.
The system is then configured based on the mid-winter sunlight for that location (or the shortest day of the year). This ensures the PowerStack provides reliable power for the chosen application on the shortest day of sun hours, and every other day across the year.
PowerStack works with a number of channel and distribution partners across the key verticals we serve, in each territory. And while we typically don’t sell direct we are always here to help answer questions about the PowerStack system, and help with the initial stages of designing a project and recommending PowerStack products depending on your site location and requirements. Hit the ‘Contact Us’ button at the bottom of the page to get in touch with the team.
In the US, we have built a partnership network with distributors, sales reps, and integration partners. For a full list of suppliers for your region, please see our ‘WHERE TO BUY’ Page.
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