Development of an uninterrupted solar powered traffic light from locally accessed materials

Abstract

Advances in transport technology have brought benefits, but growing vehicular traffic and increased fossil fuel use have created problems. In view of these, the need to address the shortage of important infrastructures such as traffic light systems in most cities of Nigeria is imperative. This paper aims at designing, constructing and testing an uninterrupted solar powered traffic light that could operate at a T-junction to reduce traffic jam and risks around the area. The design made use of an Atmel series of 89S51 Microcontroller Unit (MCU), a Vero board, resistors, transistors, diodes, capacitors, Light Emitting Diodes (LED) and battery charged with a solar powered photovoltaic module. The testing of the traffic light was carried out at the pre-implementation and post-implementation stages of the construction as well as subsequent tests carried out on the complete system for precision.

Keywords: Traffic light systems, vehicular traffic, fossil fuel, solar photovoltaic

International Journal of Natural and Applied Sciences, 6(4): 482 - 487, 2010