Think of it as a ‘light bulb moment’. Research by United for Efficiency (U4E), a UN Environment Programme-led campaign, found that if 156 developing countries were to switch to LED lighting, it would save 110 TWh of energy by 2030 – about the current electricity consumption of the Netherlands.

‘Increasing energy efficiency, particularly industrial energy efficiency, can make a real difference in reducing our need for fossil fuels,’ says Patrick Blake, U4E programme officer. ‘This improvement in energy efficiency will also reduce electricity bills for companies and support the scale-up of renewable energy.’

In South Africa, where the country experienced 207 days of load shedding in 2022 (with the South African Reserve Bank projecting 200 more in 2023), the conversation is less about finding renewable energy, and more about finding any energy at all.

Yet the consensus at a recent University of the Free State (UFS) webinar was that the solution to the country’s power crisis is not generating more energy – it’s making more efficient use of what it already generates.

‘From the business sector it’s pretty clear that not having energy security is a drag on productivity and the necessary activity that we need to undertake within enterprises and in business in general,’ Happy Khambule, environment and energy manager at Business Unity South Africa, said during the webinar. ‘But the biggest critical component that we need to do in the short-term is energy efficiency. As much as we want to have power at all costs – power in the immediate sense – energy efficiency is key.’

Khambule emphasised that South Africa is not using its energy as efficiently as it should. ‘The knock-on effect is that we keep over-building or building unnecessary power, which is not available at given times,’ he said. ‘But if we are able to use the power in the manner that is necessary and become more efficient with that, we can get more value out of that power.’

Louis Lagrange, head of the department of engineering sciences at UFS, agreed and used LED light bulbs as an example. ‘In an incandescent bulb you have 95% of the energy going in there being heated – so it’s a heater, not a light,’ he said. ‘Then you go to a fluorescent bulb, which is about 45% heat; and then to LED, which is 80% light and only 20% heat. Most people say to me that’s about as good as it gets. However, you measure in kilowatts, in rate of use, and in hours. So we can add things to the light, like occupancy sensors or vacancy sensors. We can put in lots of strategies that reduce the hours, even though [it seems the limit] of energy efficiency has been reached.’

In South Africa, retail giant Shoprite Group responded to the energy crisis by increasing its installed capacity of solar PV systems by 82% to 26 606 kWp over 12 months, through 143 674 m² of solar panels at 62 sites. ‘This is enough to power the equivalent of 3 735 households for one full year, thus easing the pressure on the national electricity grid,’ the group said. But – to Khambule’s point – added capacity is only half the battle. Hence Shoprite’s energy-efficiency efforts, which include savings of 399 million kWh to date through the installation of LED lights at its sites.

Easing pressure on the national grid is central to the question of energy efficiency. If South African businesses have learnt anything from nearly two decades of load shedding, it’s that electricity supply is finite. Matone Ditlhake, CEO of Corridor Africa Technologies, believes that smart metering and digital monitoring will drive efficient use of electricity – both among end users and at a national grid level.

‘The grid of the future is a fully connected, digitalised and AI-driven grid that can identify power needs at great speed and efficiency,’ he writes in an opinion piece. ‘The power grid needs to evolve from a mere basic energy provider to a smart grid – every device that consumes electricity needs to be intelligently connected.’

Ditlhake notes that smart grids can solve energy problems by keeping a healthy balance between supply and demand. ‘This can only be achieved through high-speed connectivity, a catalyst in grid management. In light of the current power electricity challenge, technology is certainly the solution.’

He adds that the smart grid allows consumers to view real-time data associated with billing accuracy. Moreover, he says, ‘the numbers for the expected bills are relatively low. These represent significant development potential for the smart-grid sector’.

Smart grids are monitored via smart metering, which can both encourage and enforce efficient energy use. In January, the city of Johannesburg announced that its electricity distributor, City Power, planned to procure and distribute ZAR175 million worth of smart meters. ‘[This] will enable City Power to be able to limit the amount of power distributed to homes, so instead of completely turning the power off, we will be able to supply homes with enough energy to power essential needs,’ then executive mayor Mpho Phalatse told a media briefing. This meter-enabled throttling initiative, she said, would save the city 322 MW of power.

Similarly, in May 2022, the George municipality in the Western Cape became South Africa’s first electricity provider to pilot free licensed software that automates the reading, processing and billing of electricity smart-meter data.

In a panel discussion at the 2022 Enlit Africa Conference, Edwin Sibiya, chair of the South African Metering Industry Association, pointed out that load shedding is, ultimately, the result of a supply and demand imbalance. He said that while the energy sector lacks sufficient technology to limit energy usage, utilities could use smart metering to measure consumption and update consumers on their usage in real-time. This, he said, individualises the problem so that energy efficiency is not seen as everybody else’s responsibility.

South Africa’s energy supply crisis is being felt in all corners. In 2022, ‘UPS’ (as in, uninterrupted power supply) was the third most-searched term on online retailer Takealot. President Cyril Ramaphosa officially declared a national state of disaster in February, as government scrambled to solve the problem – though that has now been terminated. And in early April, the South African Revenue Service estimated that load shedding had cost the country as much as ZAR60 billion in lost revenue in the previous tax year.

Using less electricity can’t hurt. But making more efficient use of the electricity that’s being generated is a smarter – and more sustainable – solution.

By Mark van Dijk
Images: Gallo/Getty Images