Thanks to its adoption of solar energy to power its traffic signals, the City traffic police have hit paydirt saving a whopping Rs 1.73 crore in energy bill.

Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic) M A Saleem, said: “We paid a total of Rs 19.58 lakh to Bescom in 2012. The solar-powered traffic signals, installed since 2001, have helped us a lot. We have solar-powered traffic signals at all busy junctions in City.” “Today we have around 251 timers as energy consumed by solar-powered traffic signals has reduced drastically. There are over 343 regular signals and 42 pedestrian control signals, all of them with LED lights.”