Chaos on the Roads due to power Blackout

It is interesting to stop your daily routine and observe the pace at which people do business.
The broadband driven Internet supports ever higher volumes and transactions yearly than all the previous years combined. This implies a high reliance on continuous availability of that service.
The same concept applies to traffic authorities in most urbanized centers.
Motorists have come to rely on good signal coordination and supply of power that most take it for granted.
It is a well documented fact that governments have not been investing the large sums of money needed to keep the power supply in step with population growth and business demands.
Recently, Sydney in Australia has suffered a few major power disruptions in the Central Business District resulting in chaos on the roads, confusion among morning and evening commuters using the public transport system.

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/keneally-under-fire-over-blackout-20100707-zzci.html

http://bigpondnews.com/articles/TopStories/2010/07/07/Blackout_leaves_50000_without_power_481648.html

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/08/2947861.htm

http://hills-shire-times.whereilive.com.au/news/story/hills-mps-furious-over-wednesdays-power-blackout/

This type of disruption is both a major issue for law enforcement, agencies and public transport services.

What can be done to minimize the disruption to a modern metropolis?

In sydney’s case a public address system deployed to disseminate information to large volumes of people in the city was rendered useless due to the lack of a backup power source such as a pole mounted UPS.

In the case of road traffic, the traffic signal controllers (devices) were also blacked out causing chaos in the Central Business District of Sydney, Australia.

Total gridlock was the result of no power to the intersection signals, and it is this traffic engineers opinion that governments and local authorities could invest funds in providing the Traffic Signal Controllers of the most critical intersections with integrated UPS systems that can be monitored remotely by monitoring systems such as the Adaptive SCATS Urban Traffic Control systems.

This type of system would be capable of maintaining working signals and coordination between intersections during power outages of up to 4 hours depending on loads.

Such UPS based Controllers can also be power local Public Address systems as well.

The rational is that in first world countries most power outages are brief and generally less than 2 hours, so installing Traffic Signal Controllers with UPS such as the ECUPS or ICUPS units manufactured by ATC in Sydney, Australia for 50hz or 60hz based countries, 230vac or 110vac.

ECUPS – External Controller with UPS – two cabinet solution.

ICUPS – Integrated Controller with UPS – single cabinet solution.

Traffic Signal Controllers with Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS)

Aldridge Traffic Controllers in Sydney Australia identified a market for the application of Uninterruptible Power Supply systems to backup the supply of mains ac power to Traffic Signal Controllers, such as its ATSC4 model.

ATC found that critical infrastructure such as Traffic Signal intersections were at the mercy of the reliability of the local energy authority and this would have a material impact on the efficient management of road traffic in urban centres around the world.

With this view in mind and the fact that governments around the world want to minimize any problems with the flow of goods and services in its urban road network, ATC devised and integrated a UPS and interface circuits with the ATSC4 Traffic Signal Controller.

This means that in the event of a loss of mains ac in the short term that the UPS will allow the Traffic Signal Controller to continue operating road traffic intersections smoothly and without any impact on the road user.

In the event that a power outage is going to last longer than the standby time of the UPS, the product allows for a portable generator set to extend the time the intersection is powered.

The portable generator set option can practically provided limitless backup time (subject to the quantity of fuel used by the portable generator set).

More importantly, the UPS for Traffic Signal Controllers is an option for the 240vac/50Hz and 110vac/60Hz supply grid, which means this product can operate in any part of the world.

The UPS and battery subsystems used are designed for extended industrial temperature range up to +74 (165 F) degrees Celsius with temperature dependent charging algorithms optimally charging the batteries involved.

For information of such UPS’ click on the following link:

UPS Based Traffic Signal Controllers