Cape Town - On Friday, the Cloetesville Primary School received a 7.5kW solar panel system from GreenX Engineering and Stellenbosch University (SU) which will generate about 14 000 units annually, negate almost 13 tons of carbon dioxide and save the school R20 000 annually while selling electricity back to the grid.
With solar energy continuing to dominate the renewable energy sphere, it is being incorporated into Western Cape schools. Twenty-five schools in the province have already been equipped with smart meters and energy efficient lights by SU.
SU engineering professor and GreenX Engineering founding director Thinus Booysen said Cloetesville would be using the bulk of the electricity produced, and then sell back the excess on weekends and school holidays. They hoped to continue this energy-saving project in all schools in the Western Cape.
“We are working with the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) to try to convert our poor schools to electricity power houses. With 1 600 schools in the Western Cape and more than 23 000 in the country, we have an opportunity to produce a lot of energy, and create a lot of wealth for the department and surrounding communities,” Booysen said.
GreenX was led by Jason Samuels, who received his PhD in electrical engineering last year on research that led to energy-cost savings at schools in the Stellenbosch and Paarl region.
“We have already identified 100 no-fee schools in the Western Cape that will benefit from our energy interventions. We hope that after successfully completing the work on the first 25 schools, the WCED will extend our project to include the rest of the 75 schools,” Samuels said.
As a separate project in 2018, the team installed a few solar panels at Rhenish Primary, AF Louw Primary and Laerskool Stellenbosch.
The favourable results motivated Rhenish to install a large solar plant and donate the solar panels of the pilot to Cloetesville Primary.
WCED education planning deputy-director general Salie Abrahams said they saw moving this project forward as a priority and looked forward to building partnerships to get as many schools as possible on board.
kristin.engel@inl.co.za