Traffic lights in Lviv continue to be equipped with autonomous power supply. Today, an uninterrupted power supply was installed at the intersection of Zelena and Dnisterska streets.
Lviv city council press service
So from now on, in the event of a power outage, traffic lights at this location will be able to operate for up to 10 hours. In total, half of the city’s traffic lights will be able to operate in the event of a power outage. It is planned that by the end of the year, almost 90% of traffic lights will have backup power. This was announced at a briefing by Oleh Zabarylo, Director of the Department of Urban Mobility and Street Infrastructure at Lviv City Council.
“In total, we have 170 traffic lights in the hromada. Work on the installation of uninterruptible power supplies began last winter. And at the end of last winter, we had about 35 powered traffic lights. As of today, there are about 90 of them. We power the traffic lights in various ways, but mostly with uninterruptible power supplies. Such a unit contains an inverter, a battery that allows the traffic light to operate for 4 to 10 hours without interruption. There is also a ventilation and heating system so that the traffic light can operate in different weather conditions.
It is important to equip traffic lights with uninterruptible power supply because it is about road safety and streamlining traffic flows.
First of all, uninterruptible power supplies were installed at critical traffic lights that required good traffic signal control. These are, for example, the intersection of Stryiska-Naukova, Promyslova-Lypynskoho streets, etc. Now we are moving on to other objects of lower priority, but important for the functioning of the city,” said Oleg Zabarylo.
The uninterruptible power supply units were purchased and are being installed by Lvivavtodor at the expense of the city budget. The choice of this equipment was made responsibly. We studied the experience of other cities and tested different models. “And we chose the most optimal ones. These iron-phosphate batteries have about 6,000 charge-discharge cycles. They should serve for 5-7-10 years, depending on how intensively we switch off the electricity. In terms of power, they last 4-10 hours. The new batch we have just received can last up to 18 hours when fully charged.
It is important that the batteries have internal heating. They are not afraid of the cold, as they are adapted to our climate,” said Mykola Vlasiuk, director of Lvivavtodor.
It is planned that by the end of the year, approximately 150 traffic lights will be powered, which will be almost 90% of all traffic lights in the community.