SMART CITIES

Four Sharpeville primary schools face a greener and cleaner future with a major R1.7 million Clean Energy Programme investment, through a partnership between SANEDI and the Gauteng Department of Infrastructure Development (GDID). GREEN AND CLEAN ENERGY FOR SHARPEVILLE SCHOOLS

The schools are Emmanuel, Kgomoco, Lehlasedi and Seliba, and the green technologies implemented in each of the schools include two solar water heaters, a bio-digester that produces biogas and bio slurry from food waste and animal waste, and energy efficient LED lighting.

A special Cool Surfaces paint was applied on two of on two of the roofs, which regulates the temperature of the surface on which it is applied by reflecting the heat away from such surface, leaving the underlying surface cooler. Kgomoco and Emmanuel had suitable roofs, and for two blocks at Emmanuel, paint was applied with some blocks left unpainted for reference purposes. The schools all had in common high electricity bills, dysfunctional lighting and electric geysers, high water bills, food gardens, feeding schemes and therefore food waste, proximity to animal waste, and a lack of thermal comfort in the classrooms and food gardens.

The initial audit indicated that the schools rarely switched the geysers on, preferring to use LPG to boil water; lights were not all working and food waste disposal was unhygienic. The classrooms were fitted with double T8 fluorescent tube lights and the exterior lighting consisted of uneconomical high-pressure sodium lights. The schools mostly used LPG stoves, with 4-plate electric stoves for staff.

The biogas digester system construction started in March 2017 just as the drought broke with very high rainfall. It was found that a variety of factors could affect the biogas rate of production, such as layout of the biogas system, feedstock, temperature, acidity of the slurry and water/solids ratios. The digester requires specific waste inputs, so part of the solution meant ensuring that food waste is chopped into small pieces of approximately

2 cm 3 to prevent blockages and unhygienic decay. Also,

the aerobic decay (in oxygen) causes the pH of the digester to drop (become acidic), thus killing the bacteria responsible the anaerobic digestion.

The resultant biogas enables the schools to reduce their dependence on LPG; the digestate allows the schools to fertilize their food gardens and improve their own food production. Schools can sell the excess digestate to local community gardens to generate income. This does require staff to attend refresher courses to ensure a functional system.

High energy lights were replaced with LED lighting, lowering electricity costs and enhancing safety. In future the schools may now keep brighter lights on overnight while consuming less electricity. Schools received floodlighting, using 30W LEDs, and classrooms were furnished with T8 22W LED double tubes and the exteriors received 10W bulkheads.

The greening of the schools programme saved them money, since the biogas system provides for more than one hour of cooking every day. Preliminary research results indicated that electricity bills of the schools were reduced. The usage of LPG gas has also been reduced. In the case of Kgomoco Primary School, LPG usage has been reduced to zero.

The ‘cool paints’ resulted in more comfortable and learning-conducive classrooms and SANEDI hopes to replicate this model in clinics, places of care, boarding schools, correctional facilities and military bases across South Africa.

BEST PRACTICE GUIDE FOR CLEAN ENERGY IN MUNICIPAL WATER

South Africa faces considerable challenges in delivering water, sanitation and energy services. South Africa’s municipal sector, largely responsible for delivering these services, is subject to economic and environmental pressures that include water scarcity, escalating electricity prices, intermittent or insufficient power supply to meet demand and skills shortages. Additionally, municipal water and wastewater treatment infrastructure is ageing and often inefficient.

A paradigm shift in traditional models of municipal water and sanitation supply is necessary to ensure South Africa meets its socio-economic goals while managing the environmental effects of increased demand for essential services.

Innovative approaches to energy use in municipalities, specifically through increased energy efficiency and greater use of renewable energy – representing clean energy – hold potential for more sustainable delivery of water and wastewater services. Clean energy provides municipalities with an opportunity to reduce costs in their water and wastewater operations and contribute to climate change mitigation. This represents a key opportunity to create positive, measurable economic, social and environmental impact.

Against this background, a three-year EU funded project

was commissioned, ‘Climate Change, Clean Energy

and Urban Water in Africa: Promoting market-based

deployment of clean energy technology solutions in

municipal waterworks – a pilot initiative in South Africa’

designed to encourage commercial activity to improve

energy and water efficiency in South African municipal

water and wastewater infrastructure while reducing CO 2 emissions.

drive the cost-effective deployment of clean energy

technologies and systems in municipal infrastructure.

Besides saving energy and reducing CO 2 emissions, solutions support municipalities to save water, improve

water quality and service delivery and realise cost savings.

The pilot focused on selected works deployed in municipality water infrastructure regardless of the municipality’s population size or climatic conditions, and that the development of viable commercial pathways for deployment of clean energy technologies and services in municipal water and wastewater treatment facilities in South Africa is achievable. that a municipality achieves long-term benefits from CE, sensitise municipal officials to CE issues, and emphasise the importance of accurate and useful tracking of CE benefits.

Establishing a baseline Conducting a baseline energy assessment and energy audit are pivotal initial steps when considering a CE project at a municipal waterworks. Workplan: planning processes The purpose of a CE intervention workplan is to provide the municipalities’ decision-makers with information needed to approve a CE intervention. This plan should include an assessment of the feasibility of the project, supported by analysis of the project’s costs, savings, and its technology.

To achieve successful implementation, certain elements would need to be met. In this regard, a Best Practice Guide was developed that aims to assist municipalities in the implementation of cleaner energy technologies and services.

To ensure that the Guide addresses key issues, obstacles and opportunities faced by municipal officials, government, private sector players and financiers, stakeholder groups were convened and consulted during a series of roundtable discussions and engagement events with municipalities, held at SANEDI offices in Johannesburg, and were well attended, indicating demand for cross-sector engagement in both the public and private sectors.

The Guide presents the key elements that municipal officials need to consider to implement a cleaner energy project, and provides information on developing strategies, formulating plans, providing adequate capacity and mobilising resources for successful origination and implementation of a CE project.

The Guide also presents key considerations to ensure that CE projects are implemented and operated sustainably. It is hoped that the adoption of CE technologies and services at waterworks will create further support and an enabling environment for the wider adoption of cleaner energy interventions within municipalities.

Partners: private sector service The private sector can provide a range of services to support municipalities at different stages of CE projects, including cost-effective technologies, energy system analysis, resources, access to alternative sources of funding, general project management support, etc.

Performance: contracting for the long-term Performance Contracts are the industry standard. Two most common models for the structuring of performance contracts are the guaranteed savings model and the shared savings model.

Financing: long-term sustainability Financing the implementation and operations over the full lifecycle of the proposed CE intervention is crucial to ensure the intervention’s sustainability.

Lift-off: 10 steps for implementation In this section, the CE project lifts off – resources are mobilised, equipment is installed, and results are monitored. By this stage, the project champion has a clear understanding of the CE intervention, and can test and verify that the information gathered in the previous steps is correct. This section outlines 10 actions and/or decisions needed to implement CE interventions:

To achieve successful implementation of CE in municipal water infrastructure and operating systems the Guide outlines a series of steps that include:

Foundation: strategy development CE strategies and the policies that support them, are instruments to align the organisational activities, incentives and resources required to deliver specific targets and commitments. Strategies can help to ensure

The full Best Practice Guide is free and can be found on the REEEP website: https://www.reeep.org/sites/default/files/REEEP-Best-Practice-Guide_0.pdf

Women make their mark in energy

Dr Mali, whose PhD is in Chemistry, says energy is an exceptionally exciting field with plenty of opportunity for success.

SANEDI, headed by Dr Thembakazi Mali, Interim CEO, renewed its call to women to enter the energy sector in honour of International Women’s Day in March 2019. While recognising that there is an increase in the number of women in leadership and influential positions in the global energy sector, SANEDI maintains that the rate of increase is too slow.

It is crucial for young women to be inspired to enter the energy and science sectors while still in primary school, because often the lure of the commercial sector is too strong by the time they reach high school.

Awareness needs to be created about the vast range of career choices available to women as scientists and engineers – which are not restricted to plants or laboratories. SANEDI believes that far greater awareness of the exciting opportunities in the energy and related sectors must be created by government and the private sector among young women in particular, to speed up the rate of increase in their numbers.

Dr Mali, whose PhD is in Chemistry, says energy is an exceptionally exciting field with plenty of opportunity for success.

Nyeleti Mashele from Kempton Park, who won a significant SANEDIsponsored science project award in 2018, is encouraged to see that doors are open to women achieving a lot more in the fields of science today than they have been in the past, but notes that in many of South Africa’s rural areas there are thousands of girl children who are not getting the education they deserve at a basic level. The fact is that women can achieve anything they want to, but they cannot achieve if they are not educated.

Carbon Eater

Nyeleti’s winning science project,

named the Carbon Eater, aims to

absorb CO 2 emitted by factories during the combustion of fossil

fuels, thus mitigating against climate

change. She collected the results by

recording the change in colour that

occurred in the sodium hydroxide when it reacted with different amounts of CO 2 , and established that the resulting sodium carbonates collected at the end of the process can be used to manufacture products such as glass, paper,

soaps and detergents.

SANEDI supports Nyeleti’s project as it is in line with Carbon Capture Storage and Utilisation. CO 2 can be captured from industrial sources such as power plants, steel or cement works, or collected from the air. The CCS project

looks into capturing and storing the CO 2 in appropriate geologies within the country. The Carbon Eater then, using chemical processes, can extract the carbon from the mix of gases and particles, providing the raw material for new

products.

SANEDI notes that the use of CO 2 as a feedstock raw material for new products is not a new idea, and has been the focus of research for 40 years. The scientific and engineering challenges of CO 2 utilisation are substantial, but the potential benefits are as large, or larger. Solving these challenges and streamlining the process, CO 2 utilisation could completely reinvent a chemicals industry that is tied to fossil fuel and petroleum feedstocks. This would provide a

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centre for energy systems

CESAR BUILDS BIG DATA for domestic load research

The data and knowledge portfolio in SANEDI focuses on the collation, development and utilisation of credible, objective and high-quality data and information relating to SANEDI’s areas of responsibility. Most activities in the portfolio are consolidated under the Centre for Energy Systems Analysis and Research (CESAR), funded by the Department of Science and Innovation. a group of municipal stakeholders, UCT, Stellenbosch University, professionals and specialists working in the load research space – have taken to advance and open data-driven energy research to a broader audience through digitisation and open data. Together with the five DEL datasets that have been published, the project has released two open source Python packages to facilitate data access and processing.

A major recent project under the auspices of CESAR is the Big Data for Household Energy Insights project, which has delivered South Africa's first online, citeable datasets of Domestic Electrical Load (DEL) studies in South Africa. The project goals were to provide strategic support and leadership to convene and mobilise key stakeholders towards building big data capabilities for domestic load research and deliver technical data science and data stewardship activities in this regard.

Since 1994 Eskom collected massive amounts of residential load data, surveying 15 000 households, measuring community consumption at main energy suppliers, and creating socio-economic profiles. Many researchers were unaware of the existence of this information, but in 2017 the Energy Research Centre (ERC) at the University of Cape Town, supported by SANEDI, started building data analytics and visualisation tools to enable researchers with limited coding skills to explore the data quickly and easily.

The published DEL datasets capture valuable household energy consumption and survey data that covers over two decades of research gathered under the NRS Load Research Programme (UCT). Hosted at DataFirst (UCT), Africa's only internationally accredited data archive, the datasets are now available to researchers for non-commercial use, and cover the period of major electrification in South Africa from 1994 to 2014 and span across five climatic zones, two time zones and various population groups.

Beyond delivering the technical milestones, the project has ensured rigorous and frequent industry engagement. In August 2018 the project convened an initial workshop to bring together stakeholders from across the country to formulate a vision for load research in South Africa and a task team was appointed to work towards the release of the datasets. In June 2019 an expanded group of stakeholders was invited to attend a feedback workshop that celebrated the successful launch of both the DEL datasets and a new Load Research Chapter at the South African Institute of Electrical Engineering (SAIEE). The project delivered a webinar to the SAIEE Load Research Chapter to showcase how machine learning and artificial intelligence can be applied to the DEL datasets to better understand typical household demand patterns in South Africa. The webinar was attended by an international audience of over 45 people.

Over the coming months Big Data for Household Energy Insights will collaborate with the SAIEE Load Research Chapter to release further training webinars that help incoming researchers understand and work with the DEL datasets.

This work allows local and international researchers to understand the drive to electrification in a developing economy and the rise of energy usage in various socioeconomic groups. SANEDI is proud to have been an integral part of this development and looks forward to more development in this research. A data portal that will enable South African citizens to engage with the data is under development.

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smart

SMART CITIES RISING

The rise of smart cities is central to the growth of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), which was highlighted at the 2019 World Economic Forum on Africa in September under the theme, ‘Shaping Inclusive Growth and Shared Futures in the Fourth Industrial Revolution’.

Smart cities rely on first world implementation of digital technologies which, if applied to South Africa’s dual first and third world economies, have the potential to make an enormous impact on the entire nation. In practical terms, the collection and co-ordination of datasets – by utilising smart meters and sensors in cities – has the potential to improve transport efficiency and reduce pollution and waste on a massive scale.

SANEDI states that smart cities will be able to tap into enormous computing power, driven by integration of information and collaborative partnerships to enhance their liveability, workability and sustainability, and adds that it is ready to provide interventions and advice at municipal and urban levels in South Africa where there are established local governance structures. However, key to the development of smart cities is an uninterrupted power supply, as it relies on constant data transfer.

SANEDI refers to the 2019 ICT Gartner Hype Cycle report released in August, which highlights emerging technologies and states that smart city frameworks, the Internet of things (IOT) and low earth orbit satellite systems are the three technologies that will transform business in Africa over 10 years. The report points out that smart cities have an intelligent urban ecosystem that is designed to improve citizens’ lives, stimulate the economy and protect the environment. Smart city frameworks will have a transformational business impact in the next two to five years, as cities in Africa apply diverse strategies to accelerate the development of smart city frameworks based on traffic, social and safety issues.

Cities consume the bulk of the world’s energy and generate massive CO₂ emissions. In Africa, climate change accelerates rural migration to cities, which is estimated to result in 50% of the population to live in cities by the mid-2030s.

SANEDI believes that keeping pace with smart city development needs technology that enables transportation, water and sanitation, power supply, ICT infrastructure and other services and to be able to collect, communicate and analyse information to understand what is happening now and the ability to predict what might happen next. Founded on ‘green’ technology, these are fuelled by availability of renewable energy technology and integrated sensory information, providing insights and control of supply and demand.

The pursuit of smart city development has support from President Cyril Ramaphosa, and ample global examples to inspire it – as in India, for example, where part of the approach has been on a neighbourhood-byneighbourhood approach to modernisation. Political will is important to allow South Africa to continue using technology for the development of smart cities.

Framework outlines responsibilities and enablers

Smart cities use information and communications technology (ICT) to enhance liveability, workability and sustainability, thereby improving the life of its residents.

The Smart Cities Framework, developed by global organisation Smart Cities Council, captures the relationship between a city’s responsibilities (what it needs to accomplish for citizens) and its enablers (the smart technologies that can make those tasks easier). SANEDI states that the framework is useful for municipalities and cities committed to developing a smart city.

Responsibilities • Built environment – the city’s buildings, parks and public spaces. • Energy – infrastructure to produce and deliver energy, primarily electricity and gas. • Telecommunications – communications for people and businesses. • Connectivity – communications for devices. • Transportation – roads, streets, bike paths, trail systems, vehicles, railways, subways, buses, bicycles, streetcars, ferries, air and maritime ports – any system that relates to citizen mobility. • Health and human services – provision of health care, education and social services. • Water and wastewater infrastructure – from collection to distribution, use, reuse and recycling, water purity and cleanliness. Pipes, distribution centres, catchment areas, treatment facilities, pump stations, plants, water meters at private homes, are all essential components. • Public safety – infrastructure, agencies and personnel to keep citizens safe, including police and fire departments, emergency and disaster prevention and management agencies, courts and corrections facilities. • Payments – all key contributors involved: merchants, consumers, businesses, banks, payment instruments providers and payment schemes. Payments are at the heart of economic activity in cities and form the core component of every economic flow.

Enablers Smart cities can radically improve all the responsibilities through the power of ICT. • Instrumentation and control is how a smart city monitors and controls conditions. Instrumentation provides the eyes and ears of a smart city. These include smart meters for electricity, water and gas; air quality sensors; closed circuit TV and video monitors and roadway sensors. Control systems provide remote management capabilities, and examples include switches, breakers and other devices that allow control from afar by operators. • Connectivity is how the smart city’s devices communicate with each other and with the control centre. Connectivity ensures that data gets from the collection point to where it is analysed and used. Examples include citywide Wi-Fi networks, RF mesh networks and cellular networks. • Interoperability ensures that products and services from disparate providers can exchange information and work together seamlessly. Interoperability has many benefits. It prevents the city from being ‘locked in’ to just one proprietary supplier; it gives the city more choice, since it can buy from any company that supports the city’s chosen standards; it allows the city to build projects over time in phases, with confidence that all the pieces will work together in the end. • Security and privacy are technologies, policies and practices that safeguard data, privacy and physical assets. Examples include the publishing of clear privacy rules and the implementation of a cybersecurity system. Security and privacy play a critical role in enabling smart cities because they build trust with people. Without trust, a city may have difficulty adopting new technologies and practices. • Data management is the process of storing, protecting and processing data while guaranteeing its accuracy, accessibility, reliability and timeliness. Data is king in a smart city. Proper management is essential to maintain data integrity and value. A citywide data management, transparency and sharing policy, including proper policies around access, authentication and authorisation, is one step toward proper data management. • Computing resources include the computer ‘brains’, storage of data, and special capabilities needed for smart cities. The geographic information system (GIS) is the most essential special capability, since it allows the smart city to know where everything is located. However, it is worth noting that GIS is only as helpful as the data that cities provide to it. • All three computing resources are increasingly supplied via the ‘cloud’ – remote servers connected to the Internet. Cities have options for deploying cloud services, including public, private and hybrid models. • Analytics create value from the data that instrumentation provides. Examples include forecasting crime the way we already forecast weather; analysing electric power usage to know when and where to expand; analysing conditions to predict which equipment needs repair; automatically plotting the best route for a mass transit user, and creating personalised portals for every citizen by analysing what they value most. In addition, analytics that utilise data from across departments have tremendous potential to identify new insights and unique solutions to delivering services, thereby improving outcomes.

Smart technologies have matured to the point that cities of all sizes can tap into enormous computing power, driven by integration of information and collaborative partnerships. South African cities will benefit enormously by joining this revolution.

T: +27 11 038 4300 E: information@sanedi.org.za W: www.sanedi.org.za A: Block C, Upper Grayston Office Park 152 Ann Crescent, Strathavon, Sandton 2146