2026-11-05
Marshe
Project Location: Qatar
Application: Municipal Roadway & Highway Lighting
Target Luminaire: Existing 150W Modular Streetlight Housings
Core Challenges: Thermal failure under high-temperature environments and constraints of proprietary mechanical mounting structures
Solution: Custom 28-LED 5050 optical engine + CNC dual-purpose aluminum thermal adapter plate
Last month, a municipal infrastructure contractor from Qatar contacted us regarding an urgent on-site failure.
They had deployed 150W streetlights modular light engines.
Exposed to Qatar's tropical desert climate, the optical engines suffered severe thermal failure within a few months.
The LEDs overheated due to insufficient heat dissipation, and the circuit boards ultimately burned out.
The client wanted to retain the durable die-cast aluminum housings to avoid the massive civil construction costs associated with replacing entire luminaires, but they urgently needed a robust new light engine capable of withstanding extreme thermal stress.
When our engineering team analyzed the housing samples, we identified two major bottlenecks:
Mounting Incompatibility: The original housing relies on a proprietary snap-fit clip structure to secure the secondary optical lens. Standard commercial LED street light lenses on the market cannot lock directly into the existing die-cast slots.
Insufficient Heat Dissipation: The native contact surface between the original module and the luminaire housing could not provide adequate heat dissipation capacity to handle the continuous 150W thermal load under Middle Eastern high-temperature conditions.
Rather than forcing off-the-shelf components that might fail again, we custom-engineered a dedicated retrofit kit:
High-Efficiency Optical Engine: We designed a dedicated circuit board equipped with 28 high-power 5050 LEDs per module. By optimizing the derated drive current, we not only achieved high luminous efficacy (>160 lm/W), but also significantly reduced localized junction temperatures.
Dual-Purpose Aluminum Thermal Adapter Plate: To solve both mechanical structure and thermal dissipation issues simultaneously, we precision-machined a 5mm-thick high thermal conductivity aluminum plate underneath the metal core PCB.
Mechanically: It serves as an adapter bridge, enabling our precision optical lenses and aluminum board to be bolted securely without modifying the original die-cast housing.
Thermally: It acts as a direct thermal buffer, expanding the heat-spreading contact area before conducting heat into the luminaire's heavy-finned aluminum housing.
Before dispatching samples to Qatar via air freight, our workshop conducted rigorous electrical and thermal validation: verifying drive currents, beam pattern uniformity, and thermal interface resistance.
The custom retrofit samples were delivered to Qatar last week.
The client's road maintenance and installation crew used aerial bucket trucks to install the samples directly onto highway lighting poles.
Currently, the retrofitted units are undergoing continuous on-site road testing and thermal monitoring under actual operating conditions.
Retrofitting high-power outdoor lighting in desert climates is never as simple as just replacing an LED pcb board.
It requires a complete recalculation of junction temperatures, mechanical tolerances, and thermal conduction paths.
If you are facing similar retrofit challenges or LED failures caused by high-temperature environments, our Sunshineopto provides customized, integrated optical and thermal engineering one-stop solutions.
