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26 May 2020 | Story Valentino Ndaba | Photo iStock
UFS campuses are transforming into research instruments while simultaneously improving campus operations through the Smart Grid initiative.
Imagine living in a smart home. Imagine monitoring your household’s electricity usage via an integrated system that would notify you of your daily electricity use, peak usage times, and tariffs and consumption at the location of the house. As a user, you would be able to take advantage of such information in order to manage your resources in a more efficient manner. This is just one example of what a Smart Grid can do.

The University of the Free State’s (UFS) Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences has teamed up with the Department of University Estates to drive our very own Smart Grid initiative that is transforming the university’s power network into one with full control and monitoring. “A Smart Grid allows for resource optimisation and asset protection, especially in times like these,” said Nicolaas Esterhuysen, Director of Engineering Services. 

Why is it important for our university to have a Smart Grid?
Dr Jacques Maritz, Lecturer of Engineering Sciences at the Faculty, considers a Smart Grid the natural evolution of power grids in the era of Big Data, IoT and Machine Learning. Resources such as electricity, water and steam can now be monitored and controlled to promote savings and the protection of valuable infrastructure. “Aiming towards Smart Grid status, the UFS will improve resource service-delivery to its staff and students, while sculpting a digital twin of its campus’s power grid, consumer network and resource generators,” he added.
  
How will a Smart Grid improve student success?
The integrity, sustainability and continuous supply of energy directly affects the academic project on all three campuses. The implementation of a Smart Grid could allow improved service delivery and reaction time when any utility is interrupted, as well as maintaining the valuable infrastructure that serves the UFS community.

In what way does a Smart Grid improve the lives of staff members?
According to Dr Maritz  and Esterhuysen: “A Smart Grid will support staff to perform their teaching and research duties in a seamless manner, continuously optimising the energy that they consume to enable full comfort and reliability in energy supply, whilst simultaneously generating savings in energy and preventing wastage.”

The UFS already boasts most of the fundamental building blocks associated with the Smart Grid initiative, especially focusing on monitoring, grid protection, centralised and decentralised solar PV generation and software platforms to serve all these domains. However, to integrate all of these domains into one digital real-time paradigm will be a first for the UFS.

Some examples of the UFS smart grid applications currently in practice
Real-time remote monitoring and control that focuses on the following:
- We are able to detect power outages and don’t have to rely on customer complaints. This enables faster response time and fault identification, thus less downtime and an increase in reliability;
- Solar plant generation; 
- Monitoring our standby generation fleet; 
Identifying usage patterns and saving thereof;
Benchmarking buildings in terms of application usage, area or occupancy to determine energy efficiency and identify savings; and condition-based preventive maintenance that will increase reliability while saving costs.

News Archive

UFS can lead SA in race relations - Ramphele
2010-08-06


 

 
Pictured are: Dr Boesak and Dr Ramphele
Photo: Mangaliso Radebe

The University of the Free State (UFS) could well be a perfect model of excellence in race relations that the whole of South Africa could emulate.

This was said by Dr Mamphela Ramphele, the first African to be a Managing Director of the World Bank, during the Anti-Racism Network in Higher Education (ARNHE) Colloquium held at the UFS recently.

“Healing circles need to be constructed on this campus to address issues raised by the Reitz incident,” she said.

“You might yet be the pioneer of what needs to happen on a nation-wide level.

“Can we confidently commit today to go on this quest for a true humanity and walk together as fellow citizens and strive for a more human face for our society? That is our challenge. That is what the UFS is called to give leadership to.”

“It is this human face which has the power to liberate us from the body of death and strengthen us in our struggle for meaningful life together in South Africa,” added one of the main speakers, Dr Allan Boesak, a cleric and former anti-apartheid activist.

However, said Dr Ramphele, this could only be achieved if all South Africans, black and white, abandoned the fear for each other that was hindering, if not stalling, progress in this regard.

“Fear of each other is the most important impediment to the sustainability of our journey into a society united in our diversity,” she said.

“People in this country are afraid to stand up and be counted, including many vice-chancellors and clerics. They are afraid of being seen to be difficult, and that is a major problem. Fear is the most destructive emotion that you can have because it makes you really incompetent and unable to respond to challenges.”

She said the biggest impediment, though, to ending racism was denial. “White people deny vehemently that they are or have ever been racist,” she said.

“We need to go through a process of acknowledging our wounds and scars from our racist past and present missteps in public policy.”

“Instead of saying they are sorry, those who are conscious of their whiteness should rather say what they are sorry for,” said another main speaker, Prof. Dennis Francis, the Dean of the Faculty of Education at the UFS.

On the other hand, according to Dr Boesak, blacks were and still are, to a large extent, also to blame for their own ongoing oppression. “The key here was the acknowledgement of our sheepish timidity, our complicity,” he said.

The Chairperson of ARNHE, Prof. Norman Duncan, had this to say: “If we are to confront and eradicate racism in higher education institutions, we should not do so to create comfort zones for ourselves.”

The theme of this ARNHE Colloquium was Black consciousness and those conscious of their whiteness. It was presented by the International Institute for Studies in Race, Reconciliation and Social Justice at the UFS.

Media Release:
Mangaliso Radebe
Assistant Director: Media Liaison
Tel: 051 401 2828
Cell: 078 460 3320
E-mail: radebemt@ufs.ac.za 
6 August 2010


 

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