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Cape Town is currently embarking on a new initiative to go green. With the help of 2 of South Africa’s largest energy companies, the city has installed 4 solar-powered traffic lights at different points throughout the town and suburbs. It is hoped that this project will encourage the implementation of other green initiatives across the country. South Africa, like other developing nations, has often overlooked environmental issues in favour of economic advancements.

The traffic lights utilise a 3.6 square metre solar panel. It is hoped that these panels, which have been specifically designed to capture as much of the sun’s rays as possible, will also be cost-effective. The traffic lights have also been fitted with specialised LEDs designed to use considerably less power than conventional traffic lights. However, the South African authorities are leaving little to chance. Evaluations of the cost-effectiveness of the project are to be carried out after 3 months. Furthermore, in order to discourage vandalism, designers have installed the device atop 16-metre-high poles. Batteries are encased in concrete boxes to prevent them from being stolen and used for other purposes.

Cape Town’s director of transport and roads explained the rationale behind the aforementioned plan in a recent interview with news agencies:

“The city is very much environmentally conscious. We are hoping to get uninterrupted power supply for traffic lights in Cape Town so when there are power outages like we have had over the past 2 years, we will not have traffic jams. Power interruptions mean traffic officers have to be sent to the affected junctions, and given the limited resources it is near impossible to get to all the junctions around the city. So far it seems like it is working reasonably well… but we have not had any power outages recently, so we will have to cut the power at some stage to look at the implications.”

This entry was posted on Friday, November 2nd, 2007 at 10:30 am and is filed under Technology, Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.