Solar power in a box
Young Designers — Individual Award
Joint winner: James Garisch
Sixteen-year-old James Garisch invented a simple yet effective solar- powered device to help people living in rural areas of Sub-Saharan Africa with no access to electricity. He wanted to find a way to generate electricity at no cost and he settled on solar power as the energy source for his simple device.
His solar box has photovoltaic panels fitted on top to convert solar energy into electricity that powers a plug point, a cellphone charger and a light. It is unique and affordable.
He has been working on his invention since December 2012 and it won him a ticket to the International Sustainable World Energy Engineering Environment Project Olympiad.
Home is where the hearth warms
Young Designers — Individual Award
Joint winner: Laenita Laubscher
Jim Fouche High School learner Laenita Laubscher is only in grade 10, but already her fireplace is making waves. She designed a fireplace that provides for domestic heating, cooking and water heating requirements.
Her clever coal-powered fireplace makes use of direct heating principles, allowing it to harness the maximum amount of the energy produced by the burning coal to heat water and homes effectively.
The fireplace uses an innovative suction method to distribute warm air throughout a house. Her design is the first of its kind and aims to provide an affordable heating method for low-income communities.
Her fireplace has two channels, one that works as a standard fire-place and a second that draws in fresh air and, through suction, draws the warm air up through pipes, which distribute it to the rest of the house. It is so effective that it is seven times cheaper than electricity.
Saving wood
Young Designers — Group Award
Winner: Tongaview Primary School
More than half the rural schools in Mpumalanga use open fires in enclosed shelters to cook for pupils. This method is both energy inefficient and harmful to the cooks’ health.
Nonhlanipho Mhawule, Preciate Nkosi, Leila Ismael and Lindokuhle Mandlazi, four pupils from Tongaview Primary School in Mpumalanga, came up with a solution called the Syngas Stove with the help of their teachers.
Using metal drums acquired from scrap-metal dealers, they were able to build an energy-efficient stove. It is fuelled by briquettes made from discarded maize porridge and soaked card- board fashioned into balls. As a result of the improved design, 5kg of wood combined with the briquettes provides an hour of cooking time – much less than was used previously.
Tongaview uses five tonnes of wood a year in preparing meals for its 850 pupils, costing the province’s education department R10 800. If the project is rolled out to 413 rural schools as planned, the Department of Basic Education could save up to R50-million annually.
The sun drives efficiency
Residential Award
Winner: Sun International
Sun International’s Sun City is the biggest holiday destination in Southern Africa. With four hotels and more than two million guests annually, its energy needs and con- sumption are equal to that of a small town.
Electricity costs were the highest contributor to Sun City’s monthly expenditure, but the resort has made great strides in adopting and promoting energy efficiency since 2010. The resort set an example for other residential units by installing solar-powered geysers at its staff villages.
Other energy-saving initiatives included load shedding and shifting, using mechanical heat pumps instead of electric boilers for heated pools, and replacing more than 15 000 halogen lights with LEDs. These efforts resulted in a saving of 10 125 899kWh or 12.5% over the first financial year, and 13 491 417kWh or a saving of 17.5% in the second financial year.
Retail savings pay off
Commercial Award
Winner: UGU Engineering & Ackermans
Retail giant Ackermans approached UGU Engineering Solutions with a challenge: to reduce the energy use and costs across 343 stores nation- wide. Led by David Leslie and Wayne Walker, UGU began by installing smart meters to monitor electricity usage at stores to establish their current usage patterns. Then they undertook a complete redesign of the stores’ lighting, using more efficient lights and layout.
Together with Ackermans, a broad awareness campaign was launched to teach staff about the cost and implications of wasteful energy use and to begin changing company cul- ture. The team created email reports that give usage overviews to divisional managers, using simple red flags and rand values to reveal the cost of uneconomical habits.
With this multi-pronged approach, Ackermans and UGU were able to reduce their electricity consumption across their stores by over 14-million kWh per year, says the team – a saving of R18.1-million.