Mendip District of Somerset in Southwest England will soon be getting more than 50 new parking meters and more than half of them will be solar powered. The meters are a part of a £170,000 investment by the local council after vociferous public demand for more user-friendly machines, because most of these machines were more than two decades old.
Like most solar powered gadgets these meters also fail in gloomy weather. A council that installed Britain’s first solar-powered parking meters in 2001 recently admitted that thousands of drivers had avoided paying for tickets because either the weather was too gloomy for them to work or they were installed below trees, which minimized the amount of light that the solar panels received.
It was also recently revealed that these parking meters are failing because of a software problem. The software should put the machine in standby mode when it’s idle so as to prevent any battery drain. However, the software was not designed to do this and as a result the batteries were drained much earlier than they were replenished.
The council has stated that they might have to chop some of the branches of the nearby trees so that the machines did receive a decent amount of light and drivers don’t leave the parking without paying for it.
Via: Tree Hugger
