Every year, GBCSA in collaboration with Growthpoint Properties aims to inspire a new generation of industry talent to innovate for sustainability with the Greenovate Awards. The annual competition challenges students to address real-world obstacles in property and engineering with cutting-edge green thinking. The competition opens doors to amazing opportunities, like what happened for previous winner, Julian Banks.
In 2023, Bank’s academic supervisor at UCT suggested he look into the competition and he went on to win first place in the Engineering category for the project “Design of an autonomous energy management agent for a hybrid microgrid.”
At the Greenovate presentation, Grahame Cruickshanks from Growthpoint said to Julian he knew the perfect site to test the student’s idea: Paarl Mall. The property features Growthpoint’s flagship R50-million hybrid microgrid, boasting a massive rooftop solar array and battery storage system, making it the ultimate sandbox for advanced energy automation. Fast forward a year later and a chance meeting at a GBCSA event got Banks and Cruickshanks discussing the idea again but this time to implement Julian’s system.
Together with Martjie Cloete and Michael Stow, the group worked out how to make it a reality. After agreeing on a proof of concept, Growthpoint granted Banks access to Paarl Mall’s energy data, and he would test whether the theory suggested something worth pursuing.
Banks teamed up with fellow UCT graduate Matthew Nordoff and the two spent many evenings and weekends poring over Paarl Mall’s energy data, looking for where they could add the most value, while fitting the study in around their full-time jobs.
The analysis showed there were interventions to be made at several levels, from tariff structure and configuration through to a modernised, automated and predictive energy control system. Simulations of that control system, which used machine learning for adaptive control, pointed towards shifting up to 40% of peak load into standard and off-peak periods.
What made Paarl Mall a particularly interesting site is its strict load factor requirement, the ratio of average power use to maximum power use in a month. Shifting load to save money can pull against that requirement so, investigations are still ongoing to find the balance between these competing priorities and testing different ways to satisfy the load factor requirement while still delivering savings.
In total, the interventions point towards annual savings of R2.5 to R3.5 million. Of that, early measures already underway are expected to deliver R1.5 to R2.5 million, with the remainder unlocked as the more advanced control work matures.
And this is the success of the Greenovate Awards: an interesting idea can become a real game-changer. For Julian Banks, the work isn’t done yet. He will continue developing the technology and collaborate with Growthpoint on the next step of the journey. His story is proof that the next generation of innovators can have the right ideas today to change sustainability and green buildings in the future.