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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

Two Kovsie women involved in international sports events
2012-05-14

 

Hetsie Veitch and Ebeth Grobbelaar
Photo: René-Jean van der Berg
14 May 2012

The organisers of two international sports events will depend on the expertise of two Kovsie women to make the events a major success.

The honour to be involved in international sports event has befallen Ms Hetsie Veitch and Ms Ebeth Grobbelaar.

The honour is the result of many years’ hard work and devotion in their respective fields.

In June, when the USA chooses the team to represent it at the 2012 Paralympic Games in London, Ms Veitch will be one of the classifiers who will determine in which categories athletes may compete.

Ms Veitch, Head of the Unit for Students with Disabilities at the University of the Free State (UFS), has been invited to be a member of the Classification Panel at the final USA Paralympic athletics trials. The trials take place from 27 June to 1 July 2012 in Indianapolis, Indiana, in the USA.

Ms Veitch and four other classifiers, two from Brazil, one from Canada and one from the USA, will test and verify the international classification status of the American athletes. No athlete will be allowed to take part without their classification being verified by the panel.

Ms Veitch, who recently achieved the status of International Paralympic Committee (IPC) Athletics Classifier, the highest achievement for a classifier in sport for the disabled, said that this category of sport has always been her passion.

“To have the opportunity to be involved in the classification of the USA team for the London 2012 Paralympic Games is a huge honour. I am going to start working on being chosen for the official IPC classification panel for the 2016 Paralympic Games in Brazil.”

Ms Grobbelaar, Assistant Director of the South African Testing Laboratory for Prohibited Substances at the UFS, was invited to be involved in the Drugs Control Centre in the unit against prohibited substances which will test sportsmen and women during this year’s Olympic Games in London.

Ms Grobbelaar said that even though the future of sportsmen and women would be in her hands, she is totally capable of carrying out the task that awaits her.

“I will be part of the laboratory team who will test the athletes’ samples for prohibited substances. I was part of the South African team who tested samples in our own laboratory in 2010 during the FIFA Soccer World Cup, as well as for the All Africa Games. The task is one I perform every day in our own laboratories. Each sample that I analyse determines an athlete’s future. The circumstances during the Olympic Games are different, but the work remains the same.”

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