A panel, a battery, a controller and an LED head, all sealed into one body that bolts onto a pole and needs no cable run to it. No trench. No meter. Nothing on the bill afterwards. That combination is why estates, schools, filling stations, churches and local government contracts all over Nigeria keep buying them. It is also why this has become the most dishonest corner of Chinese lighting, so the specification talk further down is the part to slow down for.
Description
Most of what gets sold in this category is lying to you, and the lie is printed on the box in the largest font the printer had. Start there and everything else makes sense.
Physically it is one casting. Photovoltaic panel across the top face, lithium cell and controller sitting inside the housing, LED array pointing down and outward. A motion sensor drops the output to a low standby glow when nothing is moving and lifts it to full when somebody walks up, and that trick is the only reason a modest battery survives a whole night. Modes and timing run off a small remote. Mounting is a bracket and two bolts.
Now the numbers. Listings in this class advertise things like 10,000W and 98,000,000 lumens on a lamp a grown man lifts with one hand. Those figures point at nothing measurable whatsoever. Four things decide whether the lamp works: the LED count and array size, the panel's rated output, real battery capacity in watt-hours, and how many hours it holds full brightness before stepping down. We measure all four and quote them. Ask us to light a compound gate out in Akobo and we will tell you which size does that job, and it will not be the one with the biggest number painted across the front.
What separates a good lamp from a bad one, once you get past the marketing, is how the cell copes with heat. These things sit in direct sun all day, every day, and the battery lives inside the same sealed body that has been soaking up that heat since seven in the morning. Build it properly and you have a cell and a controller rated for those conditions. Build it cheaply and you have whatever was on the bench that week, with capacity falling away inside a single dry season. Two years from now, whether the lamp still comes on has almost nothing to do with the LEDs.
A word on the housing while we are here, since nobody asks about it. ABS is the standard and it is perfectly serviceable. Aluminium costs more and we would stock it anyway, because ABS that has been through two harmattans under this sun goes chalky and starts cracking around the bracket points. We once had a shipment where the remotes had been thrown loose into the master carton instead of packed one per unit, and the buyer counted fifty lamps against thirty-one remotes. Small problem. Also exactly the kind of thing nobody checks until a customer is standing in front of them asking.
If somebody offers you an all-in-one at a price that looks too good, the money came out of the battery. It always comes out of the battery.
Why the wattage on the box is fiction
A 10,000W lamp is decoration, not a measurement. Sooner or later somebody will offer you a lamp badged 10,000W for less than the battery inside it costs, and the correct response is to walk away. Nobody measured anything to arrive at that figure.
How the category got here. Somebody picked a number that looked larger than a rival's, the rival came back with a larger one still, and the whole category has escalated from there until you now see nine-figure lumen claims on a fitting weighing under three kilograms.
The four dull numbers that actually predict anything. When we quote you, you get the LED count, the panel rating in watts, the battery capacity in watt-hours, and the measured hours at full output before step-down. They are also the only ones that predict whether your gate is lit at four in the morning.
Lithium and SONCAP, arranged before the goods leave China. These carry lithium cells and fall under SONCAP, so the Product Certificate and battery documentation both need arranging before shipment rather than while the goods sit on the quay. That is part of the job, not an extra.
Specification
What follows gets locked down before a container is ever booked. Each line is checked against the actual supplier and against a sample we have run ourselves rather than read about. Output and true battery capacity get the hardest look of all, because in this category both are invented more often than they are measured.
| Power source | Solar only. Integrated panel on the upper face, no mains connection and no wiring to install. |
|---|---|
| Light source | LED array. We quote the actual LED count and measured output rather than the advertised headline figure. |
| Battery | Built-in lithium cell. Real capacity in watt-hours is verified on the sample, and heat tolerance is what we check hardest. |
| System voltage | 6V on the unit pictured. Other configurations are available across the size range. |
| Sensor | Motion and human-induction sensing, stepping the lamp between standby and full output. This is what makes the battery last the night. |
| Dimming | Dimmable, with modes set by the supplied remote control. |
| Protection level | IP65 on this build, which covers rain and dust. IP67 versions exist if you want them. |
| Body material | ABS housing. Aluminium-bodied versions are available and are worth the difference for heat and lifespan. |
| Mounting | Pole or wall bracket included. Assembly only, with no electrical installation required. |
| Size range | Produced across a wide range of head sizes. We match size to the area you actually need lit. |
| Certification | CE and RoHS on the builds we quote. SONCAP is handled separately, see the notice below. |
We do not publish prices, because the landed figure depends on the specification, the Customs valuation and the exchange rate on the day you pay.
Minimum order
Fifty units gets an order moving. Sizes count together, so a shipment carrying two or three head sizes still reads as one order against that fifty, and splitting a first order across sizes is usually the smartest way to find out what people actually walk in asking for. This is one product where pushing past 100 pays you back more than most. Lamps are bulky and light, so sea freight is charged on the room they take up, and once you are filling cartons properly instead of paying to ship air, the cost per lamp drops further than any discount we could argue out of the factory. Branded housings are the one thing that lifts the floor closer to 100 on their own.
Lead time. Production runs 20 to 35 days depending on head size and whether your own branding is going on the housing. Sea freight into Apapa or Tin Can adds another 30 to 40. Groupage gets expensive quickly on goods this bulky, so from around 150 units upward it is usually worth pricing a full container against a shared one before you decide. SONCAP and the battery paperwork run alongside production and rarely hold anything up. The port is its own weather system, so leave slack for clearing and for getting a loaded truck out of Lagos, which on a bad day takes longer than the last leg of the sea journey.
What decides the right one
That photograph above is deliberately plain. Nearly every image in this category arrives plastered with painted-on wattage claims, so we stripped all of it off and left the lamp itself: array, panel, bracket, remote. The physical object is the honest part of any listing in this trade, and everything beyond it belongs in a conversation. Venocipal works to order, which means nothing on this page is stock sitting in a warehouse waiting for a buyer. Head size, LED count, battery capacity, ABS or aluminium, IP65 or IP67, pole bracket or wall bracket: each of those is settled at the point we quote you, because a trader supplying households with gate lights and a contractor lighting a secondary school compound want genuinely different lamps and no single build serves both well. So show us something. A lamp you noticed at a filling station on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, a screenshot off a Chinese marketplace, or a plain description of the area you need lit and how dark it gets there. Any of those is a workable brief. From there we find out who builds it, get the specification confirmed by somebody who has physically handled the sample rather than by a listing page, and come back with a price landed in Nigeria.
Fifty is simply where the arithmetic starts working. Bulky, light goods get priced on the space they occupy in a ship, so a small order means paying good money to move air across the Indian Ocean. On top of that sit a SONCAP file and battery documentation that cost the same whether five lamps are coming or five hundred. Below fifty those fixed costs land on every unit and the landed price stops competing with what a buyer at Alaba will pay. Fifty to a hundred works. Past that it gets properly good. If your quantity comes in under, we will tell you rather than take the order quietly.
Common questions
How many do I have to order?
Fifty units, and all the sizes count together. Two or three different head sizes in one shipment still reads as a single order against that fifty.
Is it really 10,000W?
No, and nothing that size ever has been. The genuine figure is far smaller and far more useful to you. We run the sample and tell you what it actually does.
Will it stay on all night?
A properly specified one will, sitting in standby between movements and jumping to full when somebody passes. We give you measured full-output hours instead of a claim off a box.
Do I need an electrician for it?
No. A bracket, two bolts, and nothing else. No cable, no meter, no NEPA connection. That is the whole reason this product sells, so put it first when you sell it.
Which size should I be stocking?
Depends what your buyers are lighting. A compound gate, a shop frontage on a dark street, a filling station forecourt: each wants something different. Tell us the use and we will tell you the size, rather than you guessing at a wattage first.
Can you get a different design?
Yes. Aluminium bodies, split systems with the panel mounted separately, taller poles, higher IP ratings. Describe the job or send the picture.
Can the housing carry my brand?
It can, and that is where the minimum starts drifting upward toward 100, because moulding or printing a housing carries its own setup cost that has to spread across enough units to be worth doing.
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Describe the darkness, not the wattage
Forget the wattage. Genuinely, do not trust it. Tell us what needs lighting, a compound gate, a shop frontage, a school field, a filling station forecourt, and roughly how many units you are after. We will come back with a size that actually covers it and a landed cost to go with it. Already seen a lamp somewhere you liked? One photo is enough for us to go and find who makes it. Quoting is free and obliges you to nothing, and when a lamp cannot do what its packaging says, you will hear that from us before you have paid anybody.
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