NovaSolis builds its business on making SA power systems ‘bullet proof’

Energy industry newcomer NovaSolis – Latin for ‘new sun’ – has come to the South African alternative energy market from a unique perspective, focusing on the most innovative solutions to assure power resilience as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible.

Headed by industry leaders with over 60 years’ combined experience in the telecoms, technology and power sectors, NovaSolis has identified and is beginning to solve a number of the biggest problems local organisations have in generating, securing and managing alternative power.

CEO Brett Nash says some of the key power issues local businesses face include effectively coordinating all their alternative power generation assets, crime and vandalism of power infrastructure, and a need to move to greener power sources.

“NovaSolis imports and manufactures a portfolio of solutions that addresses these issues. We work to assure power systems function optimally, are safeguarded from criminals and deliver uninterrupted power,” he says.

NovaSolis’s three key focus areas are advanced energy management platform, alternative hybrid wind & solar energy generation and storage systems, and the design and manufacturing of energy security solutions to make generators, batteries and other infrastructure much harder to steal.

Locking down infrastructure

NovaSolis tackles the problem of power infrastructure theft and vandalism in unique ways: the NovaSolis team visits vandalised sites to learn how criminals accessed them, then designs multi-layered concrete, steel & composite vaults and safes to defend against these tactics

Nash says: “One of the biggest power problems mobile network operators, farmers and many other local organisations have is theft and vandalism of their batteries, solar panels and generators. We develop both physical & technological security solutions to prevent this infrastructure from being stolen. Our own design house works to stay ahead of thieves and vandals, designing solutions requirements for category 1 to category 5 security and vaults and safes.”

NovaSolis power security systems are available as prefabricated safes & bunkers or can be custom designed and built to secure generators, batteries, inverters and rectifiers both indoors and outdoors.

He says: “We continually reengineer these solutions, considering emerging trends, tools and tactics, and adapt our designs all the time.”

The company uses multiple thicknesses and combinations of steel, concrete and innovative compounds and epoxy composites developed for the company by various specialist companies both locally and abroad.

“We do a lot of experimentation with substances that will slow down attempts to access infrastructure. WAs one of our inhouse exercises we incentivise our apprentices to test the safes – if they can get in through the safe within an hour using any tool or technique of their choosing, they win the case of beer locked inside. They’ve destroyed hundreds of angle grinder blades, hammers, chisels, drill bits and a lot more trying to break through the safes,” he says.

Making power management intelligent

NovaSolis is a local partner of Galooli, a leading innovator in the field of sustainable, efficient, and cost-saving remote energy management. Galooli’s AI-driven site and asset monitoring and management software automatically maximises power system efficiency, with remote monitoring and management capabilities and advanced analytics.

Nash explains: “The Galooli Remote Control Unit is a small, unobtrusive unit about the size of an earth leakage unit in a DB board. We deploy them on sites and can connect them to any connected device, such as inverters, generator controllers, rectifiers, battery management systems, HVAC units, water and gas meters. Galooli then controls the site as well as collecting data, learning from the environment and being able to change settings on the site remotely.

NovaSolis has also integrated it into Eskom se Push, to add load shedding schedules. This means you can automatically start your backup power minutes before load shedding starts so your cutover is practically seamless and stop the generator when the power comes back on.

Nash says: “The platform becomes the brains of the infrastructure: it sends commands to various units to switch on or off, and calculates when to use what device. It also looks at what is the cheapest available power source and switches to that. It doesn’t just manage peripherals and generation on site, it also measures consumption, tariffs, costs and overall budget, and can also manage the site to extend your plant’s life. Galooli controls and ingests an enormous amount of information, allowing businesses to achieve savings such as a 54% reduction in their diesel bills, and up to 40 times improvement in their solar system performance.””

The smart dashboard tracks battery and fuel levels, and can automatically issue tickets to field technicians to attend to maintenance and refuelling before the generator runs out of fuel..

Galooli’s predictive analytics capabilities even alert organisations when their fuel stores and battery capacity will not be enough to power them through the next stage of load shedding.

Backing up solar

Another key solution NovaSolis brings to the local market is a hybrid wind-solar power system that overcomes the challenge of keeping the lights on in cloudy weather.

NovaSolis is the only integrator of WindStream Energy Technologies’ patented vertical axis wind turbine power generators in Sub Saharan Africa. The solutions overcome the problem of solar power only being available at certain times of day, and in clear weather.

Nash notes that vertical axis wind turbines differ from horizontal axis wind turbines usually deployed on wind farms, in that they are compact, silent and designed for use in built-up areas where small winds are more prevalent.

“A hybrid vertical access wind turbine solution is the next step to complement solar. They are ideal for smaller plants, and to supplement existing or new solar deployments. They are especially valuable for coastal areas. Watt for watt, a hybrid vertical access wind turbine solution is very similar in price to that of a solar installation,” Nash says.

Unlike horizontal axis wind turbine towers, vertical axis turbines don’t present a threat to birds or the environment, he adds. “Birds see the vertical turbines as a solid structure and they avoid them. And the blades are made of fibreglass or aluminium which can be reused or recycled.”

NovaSolis also supports solar resilience with special ruggedised solar panels for harsh environments. Nash says: “Our specialised solar solutions for mines, agriculture and high theft areas are more rugged, robust and theft proof. They are designed for use at sites like mines, where blasting, rockfalls and vandalism can damage solar panels.