{"id":7885,"date":"2020-02-03T11:39:16","date_gmt":"2020-02-03T08:39:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=7885"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:50","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:50","slug":"smart-water-heating-could-help-in-south-africas-energy-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2020\/02\/03\/smart-water-heating-could-help-in-south-africas-energy-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Smart Water Heating Could Help In South Africa\u2019s Energy Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>By MJ (Thinus) Booysen<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">South Africa\u2019s&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/ewn.co.za\/2020\/01\/24\/judith-february-looking-back-in-anger-at-the-eskom-debacle\">energy crisis<\/a>&nbsp;has many dimensions, from&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/27434181-blackout\">political and economic to technical and environmental<\/a>. Recently, the country\u2019s power utility, Eskom, has been generating only about&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.fin24.com\/Economy\/Eskom\/stage-6-load-shedding-what-you-need-to-know-20191209\">60% of its capacity<\/a>&nbsp;and has had to&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.co.za\/what-is-stage-6-load-shedding-eskom-levels-2019-1\">restrict usage<\/a>&nbsp;to prevent a regional blackout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Eskom\u2019s new chief executive officer has&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.co.za\/de-ruyter-subsidies-for-energy-efficient-lightbulbs-could-be-coming-2020-1\">affirmed<\/a>&nbsp;the importance of demand management to handle the crisis. But his approach of merely \u201csubsidising energy-efficient lightbulbs\u201d won\u2019t cut it. The country needs drastic interventions \u2013 and the elements of the fourth industrial revolution are available to make this possible. These are: wireless connectivity, the internet of things, big data analysis, machine learning, artificial intelligence and intelligent centralised control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One of the biggest consumers of energy in South Africa is the electric water heater, or \u201cgeyser\u201d. The estimated 5.4 million electric water heaters in South African homes and public buildings use around 40 GWh of energy per day, draining more than\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/engrxiv.org\/rc8pq\/\">4 GW<\/a>, 12% of operational capacity from the electricity grid at peak times. <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/smart-water-heating-could-help-in-south-africas-energy-crisis-130726\">Read more&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By MJ (Thinus) Booysen South Africa\u2019s&nbsp;energy crisis&nbsp;has many dimensions, from&nbsp;political and economic to technical and environmental. Recently, the country\u2019s power utility, Eskom, has been generating only about&nbsp;60% of its capacity&nbsp;and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7886,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}