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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

Vermeulen’s work on display at Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery

2015-10-26

Dot Vermeulen, Anthropology (2014),
Oil on plywood, 300 x 200cm.
Photo: Supplied

“I am primarily fascinated in the travelling or movement of images in different spaces and media. By moving images from one medium into another, or posting and reposting them in different urban and virtual spaces, I ask questions about media presence and space.”

According to the late artist Dot Vermeulen, this is what the work for her Master’s degree was about. She was still completing it at the Department of Fine Arts at the University of the Free State (UFS).

Her work, called Posting Presence, is currently on display at the Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery on the Bloemfontein Campus. The exhibition is running from 1-30 October 2015.

Vermeulen was a junior lecturer at the Department of Fine Arts before she passed away in a car accident in April 2015.

According to Angela de Jesus, curator of the UFS Art Galery, the exhibition would have been part of Vermeulen’s final evaluation for her Master’s degree. She was one of South Africa’s most promising young artists, and won the prestigious Sasol New Signatures art competition in 2013.

In the work she had done in Posting Presence, Vermeulen said the spaces represented were derived from areas under bridges in an urban space where the visual messages left, speak of an accumulation of movement.

Exhibition event

An exhibition event was held on Friday 16 October 2015 at the Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery to celebrate Vermeulen’s work.

Janine Allen-Spies and Prof Suzanne Human, the supervisors of her Master’s degree,spoke about the work to those attending.

Catalogue

De Jesus said a catalogue of Vermeulen’s research for Posting Presence had also been compiled, and would be available at the UFS Sasol Library in order for others to “use her work for further research”.

• Vermeulen’s work can be seen from 08:30-16:30 daily until 30 October at the Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery on the Bloemfontein Campus.

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