Sutherlands Engineers - Sustainable Business Magazine

SUTHERLAND ENGINEERS

RESILIENT BUILDINGS

SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS MAGAZINE

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INTERVIEW: SUTHERLAND ENGINEERS

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RESILIENT BUILDINGS

Sustainable Business Magazine speaks to Noel de Villiers, Director at Sutherland Engineers, about off-grid energy, an innovative way to heat and cool buildings, and water conservation technology.

The last decade hasn’t been kind to business in South Africa. After ten years of stagnation following the global economic crisis, the most industrialized country in Africa is now in its second recession in two years, fueled by Eskom’s ongoing generation crisis, which has caused nationwide blackouts and has forced the state-run utility to rotate cuts between residential and business users. In the fourth quarter of 2019, seven out of ten major industries in South Africa contracted, ranging from a GDP loss of -1.8% for manufacturing all the way up to -7.2% for transport and communication and -7.6% for agriculture.

This is even before the shockwave effects of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic on the global economy have been factored in, with the latest projections anticipating a potential 5-6% contraction to the South African economy over the first six months of 2020.

It continues to be a difficult time for the construction industry as well, with a -5.9% GDP loss in Q4 2019. “We keep thinking: ‘After the election, after the next meeting, after the budget, after that things will take off’,” says Noel de Villiers, Technical Director at South African multidisciplinary engineering company Sutherland Engineers.

“But sadly, it hasn’t. Contractors Developers are putting projects on the back burner, or canceling them altogether. Much of our work is just treading water right now.”

Nonetheless, there have been a few bright spots in an overall cloudy picture for Sutherland Engineers. The mechanical services department has maintained steady business, which has helped the company to continue pushing forward in an otherwise

difficult economy. Furthermore, the severe electricity crisis has prompted many South Africans to take a closer look at the advantages of renewable energy. “At the moment we are experiencing regular load-shedding for two hours a day, or two sessions of two hours a day, which has been very disruptive to everybody,” explains Mr. de Villiers. “However, the result is that it’s raised a whole new awareness of alternative power sources.”

SOLAR COOLING Many businesses in South Africa, as well as homeowners, are looking for ways to generate their own energy, separate from the unreliable power grid. “There’s a whole new industry seeing how we can harness the large amount of sunlight we get to take us off the grid in a much larger way,” says Mr. de Villiers. “Upmarket residential homes want to go completely off the grid now. Many of them installed boreholes and whatever alternative water sources they could find a couple of years ago, effectively taking themselves off the grid from a water point of view. Now the same is happening on an electricity front. People are installing photovoltaic (PV) panels on the roof trying to go off the grid.”

Sutherland Engineers are looking at new ways to apply solar energy into the

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INTERVIEW: SUTHERLAND ENGINEERS

needs of a modern South African market.

“One example is trying to keep people cool,” Mr. de Villiers says. “We are seeing if solar power could drive air conditioning systems. Recently we also had a meeting with a supplier looking at small absorption chillers. That means using hot water generated from solar thermal to drive absorption chillers, providing cooling. It’s interesting technology available on the market. The company is also looking at what is called solar PV thermal, which is a combination of the water heating panel and a PV panel.

It generates electricity at the same time as generating hot water. It provides much greater efficiencies because the water panel keeps the PV panel cooler.”

KEEPING TABS Another approach to circumnavigating regular outages is by designing heating and cooling systems which can continue functioning without power. Thermally Activated Building Structures (TABS) involves running hot and cold water through pipes within the structure of a building, using the thermal mass of the concrete to maintain a consistent temperature with lower operating costs than other heating and cooling systems. A ‘flywheel’ effect means the heating or cooling continues for several hours after the hot or cold water is no longer being run through the pipes, meaning TABS is well-suited to an environment with regular power cuts.

“One project we’ve just commissioned is called the Brickfield Canvas project, near in Cape Town,” Mr. de Villiers says. “That’s an 8000 square meter office complex using TABS. Normally a building like this would use a conventional air-cooled chiller, but we’re producing chilled water at 16°C rather than the usual 6-7°C, so the chiller is more efficient. The building will get the benefit of very efficiently-operating chillers with the TABS system running at night, when the air is relatively cool and off-peak electrical tariffs apply. During the day, 4 | SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS MAGAZINE

the chillers will then back off, so all that runs during the day are some pre-cooled fresh air systems. The chiller system runs at a very light load, pre-cooling the fresh air system before it’s pumped around the building to keep it cool. We are in our summer period as we speak, and every indication is that it’s coping extremely well with the 35°C days. That looks very promising. It will make them less prone to the problems of power outages.”

Another project using TABS is a new building being developed by the Swish Property Group at 358 Victoria Road in Cape Town. “That’s just beginning construction; they’ve just dug the five basement levels,” says Mr. de Villiers. “When completed, it will be an office block that will make use of the TABS cooling system.

At seven stories, it will be the biggest one we’ve done yet. There’s even an option of rising up to eleven floors. Either they will have to install larger diesel generators to guarantee air conditioning during power outages, or they go with TABS and the flywheel effect of the structural inertia to keep the place cool for a couple of hours during load-shedding. They’re very motivated by TABS, as you can imagine.”

WATER CONSERVATION Last time Sustainable Business Magazine spoke to Sutherland Engineers, in 2018, Cape Town was in the midst of the most serious water crisis in the city’s history, spurring many property owners to seek inventive new ways to conserve water. (See Sustainable Business Magazine EMEA 03/18 for the full feature.) Today, Cape Town’s water supply has stabilized, but building owners in the re-

“IT’S A CHALLENGING TIME, BUT THERE ARE PLENTY OF OPPORTUNITIES FOR EVERYBODY AS WELL.”

gion remain conscious of the need to reduce water consumption. Recently, Sutherland Engineers worked on a project at the Yacht Club, a mixed-use development at Cape Town Harbor. “There was a huge amount of groundwater seeping into the basement, as the development is only about 50 meters from the harbor,” says Mr. de Villiers. “From the design stage, they decided they wanted to use that water. Because the complex is so close to the sea, the water isn’t great quality, but they took the plunge and installed a reverse osmosis system. That system produces about 100,000 liters of water a day, serving the entire 180-room hotel, 100 apartments, and two floors of offices. As a result, the complex is all off-grid. The system has been up and running for about eight months, and is running very successfully.”

Sutherland Engineers recently installed another novel energy saving system at the Constantia Village shopping center in Cape Town. “We recently upgraded them to LED lighting, and also upgrade the water system,” says Mr. de Villiers. “At the center of Cape Town CBD is a project called The Box, which is a 25-storey building which, for five decades, has pumped about 30,000 liters of ground water out of the building into the stormwater system every day. We’re now converting The Box to use that groundwater in the cooling towers up on the roof. These kinds of methods are useful in places that we can’t convert to air-cooled equipment or dry coolers, and it saves huge amounts of energy and water.”

As South Africa looks at the long-term necessity of load-shedding and energy and

water conservation, Sutherland Engineers anticipate these sustainable technologies will see more widespread adoption. “It’s a challenging time,” says Mr. de Villiers.

“But there are plenty of opportunities for everybody as well.”

The latest wave of adversity to hit the country is the coronavirus epidemic. For Sutherland Engineers, this has presented another opportunity to generate new business as the company has been involved in a number of the emergency field hospitals that have been hastily erected around the country. The rapid design and implementation of the mechanical services required in these facilities required some creative thinking, making use of systems that were readily available. These systems are now successfully operating. c SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS MAGAZINE

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Sutherland Engineers 2A Nautica Building The Water Club Beach Road Granger Bay 8005 t: +27 21 425 0065 www.sutherlandengineers.com

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