key: cord-0830698-ztcjrpyg authors: Samuels, J. A.; Grobbelaar, S. S.; Booysen, M. J. title: Pandemic and bills: The impact of COVID-19 on energy usage of schools in South Africa date: 2021-10-07 journal: Energy Sustain Dev DOI: 10.1016/j.esd.2021.10.001 sha: b61aa07464eaf3117113e0e0cba1a90efb434c28 doc_id: 830698 cord_uid: ztcjrpyg 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 these buildings, and identify opportunities for efficiency improvements. In this paper we evaluate the change in energy demand in five public schools in South Africa with changes in occupancy due to the COVID-19-imposed lockdowns. We make recommendations to carry these savings into the everyday operation of the schools, and estimate the savings for forthcoming closures. South Africa's public (non-private) schools face many challenges, especially budgetary constraints, and even more so for schools in the lower four of the five affluence quintiles [1] . These budgetary constraints are compounded by the rising cost of water and energy, of which schools are heavy and often wasteful users [1] [2] [3] . Given the lack of financial resources in the educational domain and the troubled state of basic education in the country, any reduction in wasteful expenses could be put to good use, for example to help to to pay teacher salaries or invest in educational infrastructure. Since the country's predominant source of electricity is that generated by its state-owned generator burning coal, a reduction in usage also results in a substantial reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. One of the unintended consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic's lockdowns has been a reduction in greenhouse emissions, albeit temporarily [4] . This reduction was driven by the lower energy requirements in large office buildings and also by diminished transportation requirements as people worked from home. Moreover, as economic activity subsequently slumped, energy consumption decreased further, with commensurate reductions in the environmental impact [4] . The provided an opportunity to evaluate energy usage patterns and relate GHG emissions. Effects of the pandemic on climate change have not been evaluated significantly [5] . Similar to large office blocks, a reduction was expected in schools' energy usage with unoccupied or partially occupied schools. The occupancy of schools were based on the regulations. Each of South Africa's nine provinces has a dedicated education department guided by the national education ministry. The provincial education departments are responsible for public schooling for from the receptions year (grade R) to 12. South Africa's public schools are categorised into five quintiles based on the affluence of the surrounding areas, where one is least affluent and five is most affluent. Quintile four and five schools constitute fee-paying schools, whose parents contribute financially towards the school's funds through fees. Quintile three schools tend to be fee-paying, however these schools are situated in poorer communities. Quintile one and two schools constitute no-fee schools, whose parents are considered too poor to contribute to school funds through fees. The government contributes more per student for poorer schools. Covid-19 induced lockdowns in South Africa meant that the movement of citizens and normal day operations of the public and private sectors were restricted with the exceptions of health services. There were levels to the lockdowns ranging from level 5 to level 0 -decreasing in restrictions and freedom of movement. schools could use blended learning. Furthermore, mobile classrooms were used by the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) to allow schools to operate with 1.5m physical separation, which reduced classrooms to partial capacity. Similar to non-educational buildings, this partial occupancy due to physical distancing was expected to have an impact on the building energy usage [9] . Changes in energy uses could be due to factors such as changes in occupancy of students and staff, frequency and duration of use of equipment and appliances, and COVID-induced arrangements (e.g. the usage of more classrooms due to social distances, phased re-opening of schools, and added ventilation in classrooms, increased use of air-conditioning for climate chancem etc.). All of these factors could impact electricity usage, savings and carbon emissions of the schools. Additionally, ZAR 50 million ($ 3.53 million) were assigned to the manufacturing of 100 mobile classrooms. Although these additional classrooms could have had the intended consequence of an increase in the electricity usage in schools [10], none of the schools in our sample had mobile classrooms recently added. Resumption of classes for grades 7 and 12 students planned for 1 June 4 [17] 29 May National lockdown Level 3 4 [18] 1 June School reopening postponed. Staff could report to work on 1 June. 3 [19] 25 June Provisional reopening of school at 50% capacity announced with move to digital platforms. Grade R, 1, 2, 3, 6, 10 and 11 to return 6th of July. 3 [20] 12 July Call to increase ventilation in schools. 23 July Reopening of schools. Grade 7 and 12 returned on the 8th of June. On 6 July grades R, 6 and 11 returned. However, schools closed between 27 July and 24 August. This section presents a timeline of events relevant to COVID-19 in South Africa, and specifically includes events relevant to the education system. The main events, listed in Table 1 , were used to assess the possible influences on electricity usage in schools and will be correlated primary education, which precedes grade 1), 2, 3 and 6 and secondary school grades 10 and 11 on the 6th of July (grades 1, 4 and 5 were not phased in at this point). On the 12th of July, there was a call to increase the ventilation in schools, which may have increased impacts of electricity usage. Thereafter, the move to level two of lockdown followed, which saw schools continue their schooling until the December break. COVID-19 measures were maintained for the safety of the students and staff. The effects of level one lockdown was also evaluated. In our article we correlated these events with our schools' energy data. Due to the pandemic, term dates varied substantially from 2019 to 2020 [25] . The school term dates and holidays are shown in [26, 27] , food [28] , environmental [29] [30] [31] and economic sectors [32, 33] affected, their energy use was also reduced, thereby also impacting on the energy sector [5, [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] . at schools. In this paper we assess the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on school energy usage and quantify the financial savings and environmental impact of these changes. The assessment was done to understand the impact of occupancy on the energy requirements of a school (the delta), and also to quantify base load demand, which could be used to identify untapped potential for savings in aging buildings, similar to a pre-COVID-19 study by [40] , who showed savings in schools. We focus on five schools in Stellenbosch, in Western Cape province of South Africa and compare their energy usage during the pandemic to the preceding 12 months. We used a mixture of smart-meter data and bills to evaluate the change in electricity usage at the five schools in Stellenbosch. Table 3 shows information about the schools included in the energy analysis. The time periods analysed were from November 2018 to October 2019 and November 2019 to October 2020. In addition to the energy impact, we assessed the impact of the lockdowns on the cost of this electricity. Although a reduction in electricity costs reduced expenses, we also had anecdotal evidence of parents stopping to pay school fees, offsetting reductions in electricity expenses. We therefore obtained two years' fee contributions from three schools, two quintile five schools and one quintile four school, to assess changes in contributions. It is clear that the energy usage during the lockdowns in 2020 was equal to or lower than the holiday periods of 2019. An interesting conclusion is that more energy-using devices could probably have been turned off during the holidays of 2019. Another observation is that even during the Level 5 lockdowns, a substantial base-load energy was still observed at each of the schools, possibly indicating further potential savings. The minimum load (energy per hour) detected at any school was 6 kWh over the second set of 12 months. The difference in normalised-energy usage was also calculated for each week of the period under investigation. These differences are shown in Figure 2b for the median, minimum, and maximum using schools. The figure clearly shows the two peaks of increase in the differences over the lockdown periods, and a zero-crossing delta over the period where schools were closed over 2019 for a short holiday and partially open during 2020 in the last week of June. In this paper, we assessed the flip side of the absence coin, by empirically analysing energy savings achieved in schools in our sample over the lockdown period. These results quantify usage due to occupancy, and also the baseline despite zero occupancy. We observed average energy reductions of 33% for schools with hostels, and 25% for schools that do not have hostels. These are the equivalent of reductions of up to 11.63 kWh per student per month per school, and monthly bills by as much as ZAR 50,000 ($ 3490) or ZAR 65 per student per month ($4.55 per student per month). To allow a like-for-like comparison, we normalised the energy usage at each school to a peak observed value, and plotted the schools' normalised usage year-on-year. The results show the substantial reduction ranging between 30% and 40% during the hard lockdown. The results further showed that savings per student ranged between 2 to 20 kWh/month. It was also found that energy usage during hard lockdowns or even holidays in 2019 still showed kWh/student/week to 6.98 kWh/student/week based on the 2020 reduced COVID-19 usage. Based the implementation of adequate switching off procedures, the average projected savings range from 3.54 kWh/student/week to 7.08 kWh/student/week. Fees and governance: Towards sustainability in water resources management at schools in post-apartheid South Africa Africa's Eskom allowed to recoup extra $400 mln via power tariffs Light-years apart: Energy usage by schools across the South African affluence divide Contextualizing the Covid-19 pandemic for a carbon-constrained world: Insights for sustainability transitions, energy justice, and research methodology The Race between Teacher Wages and the Budget : The case of South Africa The paradox of re-opening schools in Zimbabwe in the COVID-19 era Schools and COVID-19: Reopening Pandora's box? 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