Solar traffic lights survive power cut in South Africa
Sapa, Oct 11, 2007
Source: The Times (of Zambia)
http://www.thetimes.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=584940
South Africa’s first set of solar-powered traffic lights survived the outage which cut power to ordinary traffic lights in Cape Town last night. Neville Abrams, who could see them from his house, said that the traffic lights were the only lights in the blacked-out neighbourhood. “It was great. It was like having a guard outside and it felt like nothing was going to happen to us.”
Barry Bredenkamp, Operations Manager of the National Energy Efficiency Agency, said the robots’ successful negotiation of its first hurdle was great news. “It’s fantastic to hear that the energy efficient solar set of traffic lights is working come rain or shine, especially with the traffic news totally packed with reports of lights knocked out because of bad weather.”
He added that it was still early days as the pilot site – funded by Eskom – would be tested for a three-month period. The set was installed in Cape Town at the beginning of the month and is being monitored by solar experts.