‘One-Watt’ traffic signals from Siemens

Small is big news on the Siemens stand as the company unveils its ultra-low consumption One-Watt technology for traffic lights. The move from incandescent bulbs to 230V LED lamp heads had seen an enormous reduction in power consumption (down from 60Watts per head to around 15W) but means the load resistors and switching elements in the signal units are often the biggest energy consumers.
April 6, 2016 Read time: 2 mins

Small is big news on the 189 Siemens stand as the company unveils its ultra-low consumption One-Watt technology for traffic lights. The move from incandescent bulbs to 230V LED lamp heads had seen an enormous reduction in power consumption (down from 60Watts per head to around 15W) but means the load resistors and switching elements in the signal units are often the biggest energy consumers.

With One-watt technology the use of 24V LEDs and digital driver modules has eliminated the need for load resistors and switching elements and means a complete signal head may require only one or two Watts to operate.

This provides huge benefits as a large city like Berlin can avoid some 2,000 tons of carbon emissions and save €500,000 in energy costs every year.

In cities still using conventional filament bulbs in their traffic lights, the potential savings are significantly higher and according to Siemens One-Watt technology traffic signals will typically pay for themselves in less than five years.

Furthermore, Siemens said its LED signals retain full light intensity and also reduce service costs and it monitors voltage, current and the luminosity of the LED units, adding that may become possible to predict when LED units will fail so enable preventative maintenance.

The first One-Watt pilot projects are running in Bolzano, Italy and in Bietigheim-Bissingen near Stuttgart in Southern Germany.

Related Content

  • October 22, 2014
    Using electricity to power road freight
    Next year sees the start of the first real-life electrified road system for transporting freight. Worldwide freight transportation is predicted to double by 2050 but despite expansion of global rail infrastructure only one third of this additional freight transport can be handled by trains. This means that the largest proportion of freight transport will continue to be by road and as a result, experts expect global CO2 emissions from road freight traffic to more than double by 2050.
    Read More
  • January 23, 2020
    Making ITS connections requires leadership
    From making the commute more bearable to saving the planet, Jim Alfred of BlackBerry Certicom believes that ITS has the capacity to drive a range of transformational opportunities – but leadership is required, he warns
    Read More
  • March 23, 2016
    From sunlight to street light
    A zero-emission LED street light which its Danish developer, Scotia, claims eliminates electricity costs and feed energy back into the grid has been installed in a car park in Copenhagen for seven years and, says have consistently produced five per cent above their initially predicted yield, with no fall-off. Commissioned by the Danish Government and the United Nations as examples of future zero-emission street lighting for the COP 15 Conference on Climate Change which was held there in December 2009,
    Read More
  • February 15, 2016
    Workzone, road safety aided by portable traffic signals
    Germany-headquartered Peter Berghaus will use Intertraffic Amsterdam to present its latest portable traffic engineering products. The company’s top-selling export product, the MPB 1400 LED low-cost mobile traffic light system will be presented in its new flat design. The traffic light quartz controller for alternating one-way traffic and crossroads traffic already has LED technology in the standard version and is now GPS-synchronised. Users of this multilingual mobile traffic light are guided through the me
    Read More

Highlighted Content