Johannesburg - At least 25 no-fee schools in the Western Cape will receive extensive energy audits to determine how GreenX Engineering can retrofit them with energy-saving lights and meters to measure and manage their power usage.
This energy-saving project could see such schools save on average around R36 000 a year on their electricity bills.
The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) recently awarded GreenX Engineering the opportunity to pilot the energy management and lighting efficiency retrofits at the no-fee schools to help them save on their electricity bills.
The project is to the value of R6 million.
“We have already identified 100 no-fee schools in the Western Cape that will benefit from our energy interventions,” said Jason Samuels, co-founder of GreenX.
“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 added.
He explained that these energy interventions are expected to result in massive cost savings for the schools, but would benefit the provincial education department greatly as it will now have a blueprint to roll out to other schools in the region.
“We foresee that a school will be able to save anything between 20 to 40% on their energy bills, which could mean an average saving of around R3 000 per school per month, and a total of R36 000 per year,” Samuels said.
A year ago, Cloetesville Primary School became the first school in South Africa to receive an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) after Stellenbosch University and GreenX Engineering installed energy-saving technology at the school.
This popular Stellenbosch school, known as the Green School (Die Groen Skool), received a 7.5kW solar panel system which will generate approximately 14MW (14 000 units) of electricity per year, negating almost 13 tonnes of CO2 annually and saving of R20 000 per year, while selling electricity back to the grid.
Samuels received his PhD in electrical engineering at the end of 2021. His research led to energy cost savings at schools in the Stellenbosch and Paarl region.
Samuels’ mentor Prof Thinus Booysen, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, and Prof Saartjie Grobbelaar, a professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering, are both involved in the company.
The Deputy Director General of Education Planning at the Western Cape Education Department (WCED), Salie Abrahams said this project showed what schools can do to help communities to recover from a very difficult period.
“Here we see first-hand how schools can take on a broader role in communities, providing services that can help rejuvenate them. With this creative project, we see how schools can both help to address the national energy crisis and improve the resilience and general wellbeing of the local community of Cloetesville.
“We now need to find a way to develop a scalable model where we can roll this out to more schools so that more communities can benefit from this innovation,” he said.
Abrahams said the Western Cape Government and WCED want to participate in this process.
“We see moving this project forward as a priority and look forward to building the partnerships to create the platform needed to get as many schools as possible on board. This project has the full support of the WCED going forward,” Abrahams added.
kailene.pillay@inl.co.za
Education