Jason Samuels

Optimization model for energy- and EWH usage costs of schools and public buildings.

PhD Candidate

“A doctoral study focusing on schools’ electrical energy usage using smart-meter data and energy-change interventions. It is concerned with categorising (and measuring) schools’ energy usage, introducing changes to schools’ energy usage and verification of renewable energy sources at schools once usage has been reduced.

The study’s possible contributions include proven reduction of electrical usage, inefficient and/or wasteful, through efficiency, behavioural and awareness interventions in South African schools with smart meter data; value quantification of each intervention; identification of the influence structures at play in electricity de

Electricity consumption in South Africa is currently at a struggle with meeting the demand and as a result has caused numerous 'blackouts'. Demand Side Management (DSM) is the process of shifting electrical consumption of the grid during peak hours to off-peak hours of the day. Electric Water Heaters (EWH's) are the single biggest consumer of electricity in households and tends to have an increased interest for DSM due to flexibility and intelligent control.

The first goal of this research is to provide an improved method of generating synthetic hot water demand profiles. This will be achieved by using clustering techniques on measured water meter data to characterize different types of water usage events and statistically generating a water profile which accurately predicts the hot water consumption of a household.

The second goal is investigating different methods for optimizing the electrical energy of an EWH using the predicted schedule. Two promising optimization techniques were selected and are implemented in a Python environment to show how much electricity can be saved. The techniques chosen are Dynamic Programming and A* Search Algorithm Optimization.

cision making in South African schools; disaggregation of South African school loads; and a provided energy optimisation for South African schools.”