SMART CITIES AND THE SUM OF THEIR PARTS

By Thabang Byl, digital energy lead: Schneider Electric

Business premises are one of the first places companies take stock of when assessing their electricity usage and its optimisation – and rightly so. Approximately 30% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and 70% of energy consumption are attributed to buildings. Moreover, it is estimated that 30% of energy is wasted in buildings.

Coupled with our country’s muchtalked-about volatile grid, buildings must become smarter. Also, as it becomes smarter, through the upgrade of existing premises and the development of new, smarter buildings, we will steadily see the dawn of a new era: the smart city.

If a smart building is a collection of disparate systems seamlessly working together, a smart city is a microcosm of disparate environments, including smart buildings and the grid, operating as one organism.

Cities define a civilisation, which comprises the human element. Thus, today’s push for a smart building to meet these people-centric objectives, such as well-being and social cohesion, will form a key part of the transformative journey to a smart city.

However, for us to create smart cities, we must lay the building blocks – and these begin with buildings. A holistic building management system (BMS) is the key to a smart building strategy, as it overcomes many of the struggles that both service providers and owners face when establishing a smart building.

At Schneider Electric, our BMS offering is a collaborative Internet of Things solution that features a scalable, secure and global architecture to make buildings of all types smart.

It connects hardware, software and services over a digital IP backbone to help service providers and owners maximise building efficiency, optimise comfort and productivity, and increase building value.

If there is one driver that is a vital part of our journey towards smart cities, it is electricity. The future relies on our ability to provide resilient power to the infrastructure within a smart city.

The grid’s ability to respond actively to surges in energy demand and supply will be a key enabler of realising our smart city vision. However, this also remains one of our biggest challenges in South Africa, particularly with technology’s reliance on electricity.

Condition-based monitoring systems, for example, can lead to selfhealing designs, which will in turn enable modernisation of the power system to an automated microgrid. Furthermore, smart grids will enable consumers to readily gain access to their energy data. This will enable them to make autonomous decisions about their energy consumption.

To some, smart cities still sound like figments of civilisations in science fiction stories. Not quite. Already we are seeing developments such as Steyn City emerging as bona fide mini-smart cities which feature entirely self-contained resources such as generators that protect residents and tenants against power disruptions.

In SA, smart cities will likely be built on a smaller scale, but the adage “Lead by example” will undoubtedly drive the country towards implementing smart buildings that eventually result in bigger smart cities.

As a country, we need to keep investing and believing in this future, with leadership in both public and private sectors forging the way towards smart buildings and cities built on sustainability, resiliency, hyper-efficiency and people-centricity.