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UFS installs solar plants on all campuses, bolstering renewable energy amid continuing power cuts

18 August 2023 | Story Lunga Luthuli | Photo Francois van Vuuren

Bloemfontein Campus Solar Farm — The solar plant on the UFS’s Bloemfontein Campus, part of the university’s commitment to combatting loadshedding and embracing sustainable energy.

The University of the Free State (UFS) has installed solar plants across its three campuses.

The university says this is in response to the call for urgent solutions to loadshedding and the promotion of environmentally sustainable, cleaner, and renewable energy solutions.

Nicolaas Esterhuysen, Director of Engineering Services at UFS University Estates, said,

“The PV (photovoltaic) systems are grid-tied without storage to ensure maximum benefits and faster payback periods.”

Esterhuysen said the UFS has saved up to R32,5 million since the first solar plant was commissioned in 2017 to help the UFS reduce the impact of loadshedding and its carbon footprint and energy costs. “This will substantially increase this year with the commissioning of two large new ground-mounted solar plants on the Bloemfontein Campus,” he said.

“The microgrid installation on Qwaqwa Campus is one of the biggest solar diesel hybrid systems installed in South Africa. It allows us to keep the campus running despite excessive power interruptions.”

The UFS is currently embarking on research as part of the Grid-related Research Group (GRRP) under the Interdisciplinary Centre for Digital Futures (ICDF) to also help staff and students with understanding renewable energy and sustainability.

Esterhuysen said the plants are further evidence of the UFS’s commitment to renewable and energy saving solutions. “It is our flagship project, but our focus is also on energy saving initiatives – to ensure we are becoming more energy efficient and eliminate energy wastage. We have plans for expansion on all campuses. Some of the highlights are an off-grid solution for the new student centre at Qwaqwa Campus and to make South Campus a self-sustaining campus.”

The installed grid-tied system solar plants are operating without batteries on all three campuses, giving the university an optimal configuration between capital cost and payback period.

The energy generated at the solar plants:

Bloemfontein Campus – 3688 kWp

Qwaqwa Campus – 918 kWp

South Campus – 759 kWp

Paradys – 125 kWp

News Archive

Public Protector addresses large audience

2012-04-23

Adv. Madonsela condemns corruption and poor service delivery in South Africa.
20 April 2012

Audio of the lecture

Video of the lecture

Apartheid cannot be blamed for poor service delivery in the country - corruption should shoulder the blame. Eighteen years into democracy, South Africa still has a long way to go before it becomes the society it envisaged for itself.

“We are not there yet,” South Africa’s Public Protector, Adv. Thuli Madonsela, told a packed Wynand Mouton Theatre on the University of the Free State’s Bloemfontein Campus on Tuesday 17 April 2012. She delivered a public lecture on “Academic freedom and corruption in the context of secrecy laws”.

“Are we closer to becoming a society where values such as human dignity are sacrosanct, where freedom for everyone is the order of the day?” Adv. Madonsela asked the audience comprising students, academics and community members. She said corruption is the silent thief that steals the country’s constitutional dream, causing the poor to live undignified lives.

Adv. Madonsela appealed to students and academics to help retrieve the constitutional dream. In encouraging academic discourse on corruption, she said corruption is not only one person’s problem, but that of everybody. She told academics they could help develop the law and so help in the fight against corruption.

Adv. Madonsela, who spent most of Tuesday on the Bloemfontein Campus, met with senior management from the university as well as students earlier.

Her public lecture late on Tuesday afternoon had the Wynand Mouton Theatre bursting at the seams. Some members of the audience sat on the steps inside the theatre to hear the lecture.

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