When the sun sets in South Africa, residents of the Pomolong Township will be one day closer to receiving a source of electricity for their community center provided by the University of Central Florida. But tonight the township remains dark.
The Pomolong Township located near Harrismith is home to about 80,000 people. The efforts of about 20 electrical and mechanical engineering students, enrolled in senior design courses, will result in a renewable energy source to power the community center.
“It’s a hardscrabble township, no paved roads, no street lights, and what they call the community center basically is a tin shack, again, without any power and it really doesn’t serve the purpose of being a community center,” Burnett Honors College Dean Alvin Wang said.
The students have partnered with the Honors College at UCF and the Swinburne Sustainability Center and Conservancy (SSCC) in South Africa to carry out the task.
The students are divided into five teams; two mechanical engineering teams assigned to capture solar and wind energy, and three electrical engineering teams designing a storage battery system, electronic controls and a back-up system. Throughout the fall semester these teams have designed and budgeted for a working prototype to be tested and installed in the spring semester.
“I’m very impressed with the ingenuity and the enthusiasm of the students and their willingness to work together,” Wang said. “I’m very optimistic that we will have a good prototype and one that will be beneficial to the community center in Pomolong.”
Senior engineering majors chose the project for their capstone requirement but the idea originated with Honors College student Zina Versfeld’s mother. Annamarie Versfeld helped found the SSCC and the center is on the Versfeld’s family property -a 600-acre ranch that contains a historic Boers stone home from the Anglo-Boer Wars.
The property is where Wang and Associate Dean Martin Dupuis stayed when they traveled to South Africa in March. They will both return in May of 2013 with about 15 members of the team as well as Zina Versfeld, who contributes to the project by educating the engineering students on life in the country.
Zina Versfeld, a biomedical science major, moved to the United States from South Africa when she was 12. Some of her family still lives in Harrismith.
“My mom was born there and grew up there,” Zina Versfeld said. “It’s an Afrikaans town so it’s kind of a richer area.” Harrismith contrasts greatly with the Pomolong Township nearby.
“The landscape, from the mountains to the sea, is just very beautiful. But you can contrast that against the abject poverty of the black South Africans,” Wang said. “Just based on race alone there was a tremendous gap, and Pomolong as in all townships, they’re all black. There are no whites that live in townships because of their Apartheid policies.”
Resulting from the Apartheid segregation policies, Wang said that blacks were uprooted and forced to live in areas with harsh conditions where whites did not want to live.
Zina Versfeld said that she would dig up clay in the riverbeds to make clay pots, but in Pomolong the clay soil leaves the ground infertile and the residents without a way to plant. Trees do not grow in the soil and because there is no wood to build with, homes are made from scrap metal.
By next spring, however, the township will receive an upgrade and the electric-powered community center will be available for all residents to use.
In the Honors College conference room, members of the mechanical and electrical engineering teams discuss their plans for the prototype that will be built and tested prior to its installation overseas. Manuel Edward Keesee, a senior electrical engineering major, explains the technical aspects of the project. Keesee said they must grab energy and control it and make sure the batteries are charged at the right voltage.
In order to afford necessary materials like solar panels and batteries, the students will receive funding from sponsors like Progress Energy and others.
“Some of us are looking for external funding,” mechanical engineering major David Duncan said.
Despite the challenges they will face, Keesee said he values the opportunity to help with the resources in South Africa, and mechanical engineering major Michael Jones agrees.
“This was really the only one that had a tangible benefit for people,” Jones said, explaining why he chose the project for his capstone requirement.
Though their work is months away from completion, the end goal will benefit South Africans and UCF students; enlightening engineering students with real-world experience in their field while bringing light to an impoverished place.
Story contributions by Joseph Bleeker
