Thanks to its adoption of solar energy to power its traffic signals, the City traffic police have hit paydirt saving a whopping Rs 1.73 crore in energy bill.
Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic) M A Saleem, said: “We paid a total of
Rs 19.58 lakh to Bescom in 2012. The solar-powered traffic signals, installed since 2001, have helped us a lot. We have solar-powered traffic signals at all busy junctions in City.”
“Today we have around 251 timers as energy consumed by solar-powered traffic signals has reduced drastically. There are over 343 regular signals and 42 pedestrian control signals, all of them with LED lights.”
Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), engaged in design, development and manufacture of electronic equipment, has been providing solar-run traffic signals in City.
A BEL official said: “The energy consumption of a conventional traffic signal is 2,150 watt, whereas solar-powered LED signal consumes just 150 watt. The solar-powered traffic signal operates for a total of 14 hours per day and for the remaining 10 hours, it is on blinking mode. During 2011- 2012, we had set up a total of 193 signals at various junctions.”
No more chaos
“Earlier, when power lines were shut down, with traffic signals off, it used to create chaos at traffic junctions. However, now with solar-powered signals, the problem has been solved to a great extent,” said D S Rajshekhar, a commuter from Kalyan Nagar.