Saratoga’s backup traffic light batteries operate during power outages

The town of Saratoga put in backup batteries at 14 site visitors lights this summer season for use in case of emergency energy outages to maintain site visitors flowing safely.

Most of the price of the $182,000 venture was coated by Silicon Valley Clear Vitality (SVCE). The Sunnyvale-based nonprofit awarded Saratoga a Group Resilience Grant of $139,000.

“A lot of our busiest signalized intersections are inside or adjoining to excessive hearth hazard areas and have misplaced energy throughout deliberate outages in recent times, inflicting delays and confusion,” stated Saratoga Mayor Tina Walia, a member of the SVCE Board of Administrators. “We shortly realized that the problems we encountered throughout a deliberate outage can be drastically exacerbated throughout an emergency.”

The batteries are situated at 14 site visitors lights across the metropolis, together with Saratoga Avenue at Bellgrove Circle, Fruitvale Avenue and Cox Avenue, and Saratoga-Sunnyvale and Pierce roads.

The backup batteries will swap on for 2 hours to energy site visitors lights within the occasion of an influence outage attributable to wildfires, earthquakes or different emergencies.

The brand new system will even transition to flashing purple lights for energy outages which might be longer than two hours, lasting as much as eight hours.

Saratoga officers would have management over the lights in emergency conditions to facilitate the most secure and only stream of site visitors if evacuations are wanted.

SVCE invested $5 million into native communities to assist cities throughout energy outages.

“SVCE accredited this grant funding to assist the funding in native power resilience,” stated SVCE CEO Girish Balachandran. “The backup battery venture provides an vital security function that helps defend the group from being weak to grid outages, and supplies management to town in case evacuations are wanted.”

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