Solar Panels?? On Side Of Road

[ll_billym]

Recently solar panels? have been installed on the side of many main roads and motorways.  The panel itself is about 50cm square on top of a 2.5m pole, the pole is always painted green.  They seem to be in the middle of nowhere with nothing connected to them.  They have been around for about a year

 

Can anyone shed any light on this?

[apricot2]

They're probably mini weather stations.  We have them in Cumbria and they relay information to tell the engineers whether the road need salting and things like that.

[sddsddean]

Assuming thay are not attached to blue poles, to power the 'Trafficmaster' detectors, they will almost certainly be for detector loop counters. The loops are cut into the road surface (you can see them at approaches to traffic lights) and when used 'in the middle of nowhere' they will count traffic flow (usually there is a little box in the verge. This can be as small as a 6" cube). Obviously, if in the middle of nowhere, there may not be a readily available power source, so solar is ideal. Lots of countries have their motorway emergency phones powered by solar power as well, to save on running expensive cabling.