M.J. (Thinus) Booysen

Stellenbosch University | SUN · Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering

Scheduled control of domestic electric water heaters, designed to cut energy use while minimising the impact on users' comfort and convenience, has been fairly common for some time in a number of countries. The aim is usually load-shifting (by heating water at off-peak times) and/or maximising time-of-use pricing benefits for users. The scheduling...

Electric vehicles (EVs) are widely heralded as the silver bullet for greening personal transport. However their eventual impact in South Africa, a developing country with a low-capacity carbon-heavy grid, is questionable. This paper examines the potential impact of electrification of the vehicle fleet in South Africa, and explores the concept that...

Minibus taxi public transport is a seemingly chaotic phenomenon in the developing cities of the Global South with unique mobility and operational characteristics. Eventually this wide-spread fleet of minibus taxis will have to transition to electric vehicles. This paper examines the impact of this inevitable evolution on a city-wide scale in Kampal...

Electrification is expected to decarbonise transportation and forms part of the agenda to delay climate change. EV sales have ballooned and production of combustion engines will stop soon. In sub-Saharan Africa the transition is slow. Minibus taxis carry more than 70% of commuters and little is known about the electrification requirements. This unc...

The nascent electrification of transport has heralded a new chapter in the driving force of mobility. Developing regions such as sub-Saharan Africa already lag in this transformative transport transition. A potential transitional step towards full-scale electric mobility is the retrofitting of the existing fleet of internal combustion-based vehicle...

The inevitable electrification of the sub-Saharan African paratransit system poses substantial threats to an already crippled electricity supply network. The integration of any electric vehicle fleet in this region will require in-depth analyses and understanding of the grid impact due to charging. This allows informative decisions for sufficient p...

A greenhouse tunnel in Stellenbosch, South Africa was used for testing a generic sensing system for monitoring and control of climatic conditions in the tunnel. Three temperature and humidity sensors were used to record data throughout the day in 5 min intervals. Bambara Nuts, a climate change-resilient and nutritious crop, were grown in a separate...

Unpredictable weather patterns caused by climate change is impacting agricultural productivity worldwide. This threatens sustainability and may lead to food insecurity, especially in poorer regions. Affluent countries can afford costly investments toward mitigating the affects of climate change on food production. However, poorer countries tend to...

SIGNIFICANCE: Culling electrical demand to save a fickle supply costs South Africa more than you may think. Load shedding is South Africa's new norm, affecting each of us, with individual impacts ranging from annoyance to ruin. Much of our vital and collective electrical lifeline is sacrificed on the altars of convenience, inefficiency, and oversig...

Load shedding has become the norm in South Africa. These rolling blackouts currently range from Stage 1 to Stage 6. Households are disempowered for 2–4 hours and for an average of 1.5 – 9 hours per day. In financially unequal South Africa, heavy users can afford battery backup solutions to keep the lights on. However, installing these at scale, wit...

Bird identification is an important task in wildlife monitoring and conservation. However, traditional methods for bird identification often require significant computational resources, making them impractical for use on edge computing devices. In this paper, we propose an image mosaicing-based method for bird identification on edge computing devic...

Planning for the eventual electrification of transport in sub-Saharan Africa requires accurate simulation of its unique transport systems. The few studies that attempt to model electric minibus taxis—vehicles extensively used in sub-Saharan Africa’s public transport systems—vary greatly in their results. This paper analyses, compares and corrects t...

The temporal histogram model and synthesiser that is presented in this paper statistically models the unique usage behaviour of electricity or hot water usage for individual residential households. These can be used to model behaviour and do simulations for demand management and planning. The model takes into consideration both seasonal variations...

The minibus taxi (MBT) is the dominant form of public transport across Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). With a growing global call for greener transport, MBTs are seen as a key sector of implementation. The electrification of MBTs entails many challenges, including limited electricity resources and the lack of understanding of MBTs' operational behaviour....

As fuel prices climb and the global automotive sector migrates to more sustainable vehicle technologies, the future of South Africa's minibus taxis is in flux. The authors' previous research has found that battery electric technology struggles to meet all the mobility requirements of minibus taxis. They investigate the technical feasibility of powe...

Despite the unstoppable global drive towards electric mobility, the seemingly inevitable electrification of sub-Saharan Africa's main mode of transportation, so-called ``paratransit'', raises substantial concerns due to an already struggling electric infrastructure and supply network. Without careful planning and mitigation, the additional load of...

p>Despite the unstoppable global drive towards electric mobility, the seemingly inevitable electrification of sub-Saharan Africa's main mode of transportation, so-called ``paratransit'', raises substantial concerns due to an already struggling electric infrastructure and supply network. Without careful planning and mitigation, the additional load o...

p>Planning for eventual electrification of transport in sub-Saharan Africa requires accurate simulation of its unique transport systems. The few studies that attempt to model electric minibus taxis – vehicles extensively used in sub-Saharan Africa’s public transport systems – vary greatly in their results. In this paper, we analyse, compare and cor...

p>Planning for eventual electrification of transport in sub-Saharan Africa requires accurate simulation of its unique transport systems. The few studies that attempt to model electric minibus taxis – vehicles extensively used in sub-Saharan Africa’s public transport systems – vary greatly in their results. In this paper, we analyse, compare and cor...

Face recognition is widely used for security and access control. Its performance is limited when working with highly pigmented skin tones due to training bias caused by the under-representation of darker-skinned individuals in existing datasets and the fact that darker skin absorbs more light and therefore reflects less discernible detail in the vi...

In the course of a more intensive energy generation from regenerative sources, an increased number of energy storages is required. In addition to the widespread means of storing electric energy, storing energy thermally can contribute significantly. However, limited research exists on the behaviour of thermal energy storages (TES) in practical oper...

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is faced with the challenge to integrate e-mobility into its paratransit (its informal mass transit). Old, unsafe, fuel-inefficient, polluting minibus taxis are the cornerstone of daily commuting for millions in the region. Planning for electrification requires accurate high-frequency mobility data, which is currently unava...

The expected electrification of Sub-Sahara Africa's urban paratransit with an electric minibus taxi (eMBT) has received increased attention in energy research and expenditure analyses. In this paper, several long-distance routes between the Western Cape and the Eastern Cape in South Africa are assessed for electrification. To mitigate the long char...

Paratransit, in particular the minibus taxi, is the mainstay of public transport in sub-Saharan Africa. These vehicles are often secondhand , ageing, fuel inefficient, and expensive to operate-issues that electrification can ameliorate. However, modeling and planning large-scale transitions to electric paratransit require reliable estimates of vehi...

Global agricultural production is currently limited by negative climate-related hazards such as drought, uneven rainfall and rising temperatures. Many efforts have been put in place by government and non-government agencies to mitigate the challenges of climate change in the sector. However, the approaches do not seem feasible due to the growing de...

Self-regulated learning is a key attribute in tertiary engineering education, and forms the basis of engineering judgement. The experience of remote learning during the COVID-19 era revealed particular challenges in self-regulated student learning practices, but also resulted in a number of systemic, technology-based interventions to enable improve...

Minibus taxis are ubiquitous in the developing cities of the Global South. This versatile and somewhat chaotic public transport system is now faced with the need to move to renewable energy. However, the looming roll-out of electric vehicles poses a threat to the already fragile electrical grids of African cities. This chapter evaluates the energy...

The COVID-19 pandemic created large disruptions in the energy industry as governments all around the world responded by enforcing lockdowns on 54% of the global population to slow down the spread of the virus. This impacts the energy consumption of the residential sector as policies prevented residents from leaving their homes and accelerated the t...

Accurate modelling of household electricity on a large scale is a cornerstone for demand management and decarbonisation efforts. This paper introduces a data-driven model for South African households. According to the Paris Agreement, a 50 % reduction in global CO2 emissions is required to ensure the global average temperature does not surpass 2 °C...

Decarbonisation of Africa’s informal paratransit through electrification requires adequate data captured correctly. Field workers getting on-board as passengers with tracked phones are extensively used to measure flow rates and volumes of passengers and vehicles on sections of roads in transport planning applications. Although this method is accept...

Today, more than 700 cities worldwide have made net-zero pledges. Managing these bold targets, however, is not easy given the complexity of urban systems. Although holistic mitigation efforts are vital, individual sectors are likely to face their own challenges and require tailor-made solutions. This Voices asks: what are the challenges and opportu...

Electric water heaters, which have the capacity to act as thermal energy storage, are well suited to demand management strategies in smart grid applications. However, finding the balance between managing power load, reducing thermal energy losses, user’s convenience, and bacterial growth control, requires accurate modelling of the internal thermal...

Minibus taxi public transport is a seemingly chaotic phenomenon in the developing cities of the Global South with unique mobility and operational characteristics. Eventually this wide-spread fleet of minibus taxis will have to transition to electric vehicles. This paper examines the impact of this inevitable evolution on a city-wide scale in Kampal...

Breakthroughs in smart grid technology make it possible to deliver electricity in controlled and intelligent ways to improve energy efficiency between the user and the utility. Demand-side management strategies can reduce overall energy usage and shift consumption to reduce peak loads. Electric water heaters account for 40% of residential energy co...

Minibus taxis are ubiquitous in the developing cities of the Global South. This versatile, and somewhat chaotic public transport system is now faced with the need to move to renewable energy. But the looming roll-out of electric vehicles poses a threat to the already fragile electrical grids of African cities. This chapter evaluates the energy requ...

Electric water heaters are a large contributor to domestic electrical energy dissipation and contribute disproportionally to the domestic load during peak grid hours. However, their capacity to store energy makes them well suited to demand-side management. However, poor application thereof could come at the cost of energy savings, user comfort, and...

Minibus taxi public transport is a seemingly chaotic phenomenon in the developing cities of the Global South with unique mobility and operational characteristics. Eventually this ubiquitous fleet of minibus taxis is expected to transition to electric vehicles, which will result in an additional energy burden on Africa's already fragile electrical g...

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc on global operations and economies. Inadvertently, lock-downs and working from home have reduced the daily carbon footprints of transport and office buildings. A beneficial consequence of these reductions is the ability to measure the differential demand of occupants, to benchmark the base load of thes...

Breakthroughs in smart grid technology make it possible to deliver electricity in controlled and intelligent ways to improve energy efficiency between the user and the utility. Demand-side management strategies can reduce overall energy usage and shift consumption to reduce peak loads. Electric water heaters account for 40% of residential energy co...

CONTEXT The research study was conducted at a contact-based, research-intensive university in South Africa, where the faculty of engineering has adopted a feedback-feedforward approach to improving engineering pedagogy through theoretically-supported, interdisciplinary and community-of-practice approaches. The outcomes-based curricula are designed...

Water features prominently in discussions on sustainability. The recent Cape Town “Day Zero” drought heightened fears about global cities running dry as the climate changes. During that crisis a campaign was launched to save water at schools, consisting of a basic maintenance campaign and a behavioural campaign. The former was limited to easy fixes...

Water features prominently in discussions on sustainability. The recent Cape Town ‘Day Zero’ drought heightened fears about global cities running dry as the climate changes. During that crisis a campaign was launched to save water at schools, consisting of a basic maintenance campaign and a behavioural campaign. The former was limited to easy fixes...

Mental health issues related to academic stress are experienced amongst undergraduates from different disciplines, with key factors being workload, study skills, resource access and socioeconomic conditions. The status of mental health and well-being of engineering students, globally, has become of increasing concern, but is relatively poorly resea...

Poor resource management and infrastructure limitations make the effects of drought worse for cities in developing countries. One way to alleviate the impact without large investments is targeted demand management. This has worked well in studies that focused on some of the recent droughts, including Cape Town's ‘Day Zero’ drought of 2016–2018. Man...

The operation of water heating uses a substantial amount of energy and is responsible for 30% of a household's overall electricity consumption. Determining methods of reducing energy demand is crucial for countries such as South Africa, where energy supply is almost exclusively electrical, 88% of which is generated by coal, and energy deficits caus...

The energy requirements for an Electric Water Heater (EWH) accounts for 40% of a household's total energy consumption and 30% of greenhouse gases emissions. The flexibility of the device to store thermal energy for long periods highlights how the intensity of the grid demand can be alleviated by implementing demand-side management (DSM) strategies....

Minibus taxi public transport is a seemingly chaotic phenomenon in the developing cities of the Global South with unique mobility and operational characteristics. Eventually this ubiquitous fleet of minibus taxis will have to transition to electric vehicles. This paper examines the impact of this inevitable evolution. We present a generic simulatio...

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc on global operations and economies. Inadvertently, lock-downs and working from home have reduced the daily carbon footprints of transport and office buildings. A beneficial consequence of these reductions is the ability to measure the differential demand of occupants, to benchmark the base load of thes...

Water heating is a major component of domestic electrical energy usage, in some countries contributing to 25% of the residential sector energy consumption. Demand response strategies can reduce the time-of-use costs and overall electrical energy consumption. We present a method to reduce the electrical energy usage itself. Our novel heating schedul...

A high penetration of renewable energy sources such as wind power generation and photo-voltaic generation causes some problems in power systems such as the duck curve and unreliability dueto environmental variability. An effective solution to this problem is Demand Response (DR). ElectricWater Heaters (EWHs) are considered ideal candidates for DR d...

A high penetration of renewable energy sources such as wind power generation and photo-voltaic generation causes some problems in power systems such as the duck curve and unreliability due to environmental variability. An effective solution to this problem is Demand Response (DR). Electric Water Heaters (EWHs) are considered ideal candidates for DR...

Urban travelers in Africa depend on minibus taxis for their daily social and business commuting. This paratransit system is loosely regulated, self-organizing, and evolves organically in response to demand. Our study used floating car data to analyze and describe the movement characteristics of nine minibus taxis in Kampala, Uganda. We made three i...