Business Challenge:
On June 20, 2015, a Saturday, a power failure was detected at an intersection within the City of Sandy Springs. Immediately a text message and email was sent to the Sandy Springs traffic engineers alerting them about the power failure. A second alert message was sent out to confirm that the battery back up system (BBS) was operating correctly and that the intersection was now running on the BBS power. This provided the traffic engineers with the knowledge that the traffic intersection was working correctly. The city knows that the BBS systems can run the intersection for about 1-2 hours before the BBS system runs low on battery power. So time was of the essence to get the power restored to this location.
The traffic engineers immediately notified the utility company of the power problems at the traffic intersection. The utility company dispatched an engineer to resolve the power issue. About 40 minutes after the power had failed the BBS system reported a low battery alarm and subsequent notifications were sent out. Luckily the utility company was able to restore power to the traffic intersection before the BBS system ran out of power.
The Solution:
The Glance Smart City Supervisory System allowed traffic engineers to remotely manage the power failure event with constant feedback being provided from Glance. This advanced notice of the power failure event provided the team with a head start and ensured that the traffic controller continued to function correctly with the help of the BBS system. Below are graphs of the AC voltage and the BBS voltage during the last week.
Event Timeline:
Comments from Customer, Bill Andrews
“Glance provided me with a 2 hour headstart”
“The advanced notification gave us the time we needed to ensure the battery backup continued to power the intersection during the power fail event”
“Throughout the whole event I was kept up to date”
