Commlight Information

Behind COMMLIGHT® is a group of people with different backgrounds & nationalities located in Singapore, with one common goal: To improve the safety, life quality and productivity in areas that are not connected to the electricity grid. In many of these areas people have kerosene lamps or solar Pico lights for their homes, but when it comes to the public space like for example market places or village dwells it gets dark after sunset. Public life stops and especially women are exposed to risk. We needed a light that sufficiently lights these places, is affordable, charged independent by solar energy, is easy & flexible to install and last but not least theft-proof and reliable. The result is the COMMLIGHT® series, an all-integrated and maintenance free solar safety & community light. It is lean and efficient by adapting the light with a motion sensor, to dim it to a low light level for the times when there is no activity. How did we get there? Firstly we were benefiting a lot from the fast development in the recent years in the areas of solar technology, LED technology and Electro mobility. The price of solar panels was cut by more than half, LED's increased steadily in efficiency and new battery types became affordable with development of electric cars and mobile phones. We developed our own solar charging algorithm for Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries, which then have an expected lifetime of 8-10 years in our COMMLIGHT®. We started as a research project at the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore (SERIS) within the National University of Singapore (NUS). The Singapore MIT-Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) gave us a kick-start with a first development grant. We worked us all the way through with battery & LED testing, developed our own hard & software to manage the system efficiently and conducted outdoor tests with data logging at over 10 sites globally. In summer 2013 we were ready to spin-off a company and started commercial production in Thailand, after partnering with the Norwegian Differ Group and the German Fosera Group as our investors. During the first 12 months of operation we produced COMMLIGHTS and shipped them already to over 35 countries in the world. That we are on the right track was confirmed at the TechVenture Business competition in Singapore, where we were honored as "most promising startup in Singapore 2013". We are support also by EDB Singapore within the Quickstart Program. In close cooperation with our customers and partners we work continuously on improvements and further developments around solar community and safety lighting.