Abstract—Haul roads within the pit are one of the critical areas in surface mines where lighting installations are not permanent due to regular advancement of the working face. Due to this reason it is very difficult to maintain the lighting standards, as specified by various regulatory bodies. Lighting in mines presents special problems because of the dark surroundings and low surface reflectance. Hence, scientific design of artificial lighting is very important to achieve the minimum required lighting standards. This is mainly because of their shorter life and relatively more number of poles. In general, lamp selection is made mainly based on efficacy and suitability to each situation. However, among all feasible alternatives for any project, use of compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) with stand-alone lighting system is highly acceptable. Stand-alone photovoltaic lighting systems provides flexibility for changing the location of pole according to surface mine haul roads. The luminous efficacy increases with switching frequency while providing eye comfort to user. The low electrical consumption makes the CFL an ideal choice for solar photovoltaic (SPV) stand-alone lighting system for surface mine haul roads. The present role of this paper is to illuminate CFL at a constant level in varying state of charge of the battery. Index Terms—Reflectance, Haul road, CFL, SPV, MCT I. INTRODUCTION surface mine which covers several square kilometers of land, where work is carried out round the clock, systematic artificial lighting is necessary for providing safe and efficient working environment. Haul roads within the pit are one of the critical areas where lighting installations are not permanent due to regular advancement of the working face [1]. Another major problem is dark surrounding and low surface reflectance. Due to this reason it is very difficult to maintain the lighting standards, specified by various regulatory bodies. In India Director General of Mines Safety (DGMS) guidelines suggests a minimum horizontal illuminance level of 0.5 lux in haul roads [2] & [4]. But in reality uniformity ratio is also essential in design of illumination system for uniform distribution of light and Nitai Pal, Associate Professor is associated with Dept. of Electrical Engineering of Indian School of Mines (Under MHRD, Govt. of India) Dhanbad, Jharkand – 826004, India Email: nitai_pal@rediffmail.com S.Vamsi Krishna, Junior Research Fellow is associated with Dept. of Electrical Engineering of Indian School of Mines (Under MHRD, Govt. of India) Dhanbad, Jharkand – 826004, India Email: svamsi82@gmail.com Ramjee Prasad Gupta, Lecturer is associated with Dept. of Electrical Engineering of BIT Sindri, Sindri, Dhanbad, Jharkhand, India Email: ramjee_gupta@yahoo.com Ayodhya Kumar, Principal is associated with Govt. Women’s Polytechnic, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, India Email: principalak@gmail.com Upendra Prasad, Assistant Professor is associated with Dept. of Electrical Engineering of BIT Sindri, Sindri, Dhanbad, Jharkhand, India Email: upendra_bit@yahoo.co.in to provide sufficient illuminance on visual task. Use of compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) with stand-alone lighting system is highly acceptable. Stand-alone photovoltaic lighting systems provides flexibility for changing the location of pole according to change of surface mine haul roads. However, the CFL's electrical requirements are not easily met by hard-switched inverters due to their higher switching losses at higher frequencies. The difficulty in meeting the complex electrical requirements such as preheat and ignition voltage of CFL resulting in lower efficiency. In order to make a successful photovoltaic lighting system, the first step is to select a well-suited high-frequency inverter and a series interrupting type charge controller for producing light at haul roads and remote areas of surface mine while maintaining reliability. II. PRINCIPLES OF HAUL ROAD LIGHTING Seven different types of light poles layouts are possible for haul roads such as single sided, double sided opposite, staggered, twin central, central catenary system, centrally suspended system [3] & [5] and single sided stand-alone photovoltaic lighting system. Among these, the single sided stand-alone photovoltaic lighting system arrangement is the most prevalent one in mines as installation of poles and electrification process in this layout is simple, as no connection is required from one pole to another pole. Fig. 1 shows an overview of open cast mine with uncovered coal seam. CFL with stand-alone solar lighting system is shown in Fig. 2 for surface mine haul roads. Haul Roads Lighting System for Open Cast Mine using Green Energy Nitai Pal, S.Vamsi Krishna, Ramjee Prasad Gupta, Ayodhya Kumar and Upendra Prasad A Fig. 1. open cast mine with uncovered coal seam Fig. 2. CFL with stand alone lighting system for surface mine haul roads Proceedings of the International MultiConference of Engineers and Computer Scientists 2012 Vol II, IMECS 2012, March 14 - 16, 2012, Hong Kong ISBN: 978-988-19251-9-0 ISSN: 2078-0958 (Print); ISSN: 2078-0966 (Online) IMECS 2012