Design and Implementation of a Solar-Powered Automatic Street Lighting System for Rural Communities in Kebbi State

Rural electrification remains one of Nigeria's most persistent development challenges, with millions of households in north-western states lacking reliable grid power. This project designed and implemented a solar-powered automatic street lighting system tailored for rural communities in Kebbi State, North West Nigeria. The system uses a photovoltaic panel rated at 80W, a 12V lead-acid battery bank, a pulse-width modulation charge controller, and light-dependent resistors to enable automatic dusk-to-dawn switching without manual intervention. An ATmega328P microcontroller was programmed in C to manage battery state-of-charge monitoring, low-battery cutoff, and fault indication via LED alerts. The prototype was assembled and tested across five simulated daily charging and discharging cycles under Kebbi State average solar irradiance conditions of approximately 6.2 peak sun hours per day. Results showed a mean luminous efficacy of 94 lumens per watt, an average charge efficiency of 91.3 percent, and a continuous illumination time of 11.4 hours on a full charge. The automatic switching response time measured 4.2 seconds after the ambient light threshold was crossed, meeting the design target of below 5 seconds. Battery lifespan was projected at 4.2 years based on depth-of-discharge cycling data. The study concludes that the system provides a cost-effective and maintainable lighting solution for remote communities without grid access. Recommendations include scaling to a 12-lamp cluster configuration and integrating a GSM-based fault notification module for communities without on-site technical support.

Keywords: solar street lighting, microcontroller, rural electrification, Kebbi State, photovoltaic system