Survey data on the socio-economic characteristics and electric vehicle perceptions of paratransit owners and drivers in and around the Cape Town Metropole of South Africa.

The survey data contain information on the socio-economic characteristics and intention of electric vehicle (EV) adoption amongst paratransit owners and drivers, to address knowledge gaps and inform policy-making in paratransit electrification. The data were collected by distributing a Microsoft Forms survey questionnaire among paratransit owners and drivers in and around Cape Town, South Africa. The questions in the survey were designed to gain information, and to provide information on the latent constructs of the behavioural framework constructed in "Electric vehicle adoption intention among paratransit owners and drivers in South Africa". The data were used in the aforementioned paper to shed light on the attitudes, barriers, and enablers to EV adoption in the paratransit sector, providing insights for targeted interventions and promoting sustainable mobility. The data can be re-used for more in-depth studies of, as well as comparative studies assessing the socio-economic profiles and EV perceptions of paratransit owners and drivers in vs. other regions, and longitudinal studies benchmarking changes in EV perceptions in these demographics over time. Comparative studies could identify regional variations, cultural influences, and policy implications for promoting EV adoption in different contexts, and longitudinal studies can assess the effectiveness of interventions, policy changes, or technological advancements on EV adoption in the paratransit sector over time.

Dataset for the characterisation of thermal stratification in horizontally configured electric water heaters.

A test station was designed and built to measure the thermal stratification (vertical thermal gradients) in a horizontal 150 L electric water heater storage device for different external environmental and user-emulating inputs, ambient temperature, inlet water temperature, water draw flow rate, thermostat temperature and heating coil active time. Stratification measurement consists of 66 temperature sensors that coarsely map three-dimensional temperature gradients within the horizontally configured heating device, under different operational conditions. Other significant temperatures such as inlet, outlet, ambient, thermostat feedback, and wall temperatures were also recorded. An ambient temperature control (climatic) chamber was built to emulate the environmental conditions. A custom-built controller was used to control thermal actuators, the power to the thermostat and the state of the outlet valve. In addition, it also acted as a data acquisition system, responsible for recording all relevant sensor data that was present in the system as well as the test station operating states. The dataset includes heating and thermostat control data and the corresponding thermal stratification profiles under static operating conditions (no water draw) at different ambient temperatures (20 °C, 30 °C, and 40 °C). Additionally, dynamic operating conditions (with water draw) are recorded, maintaining inlet water temperatures at approximately 10 °C and 30 °C. The dataset highlights thermal profiles with and without thermostat control and ambient cooling data without thermostat control. Existing research primarily focuses on vertically oriented water heaters, with limited attention to thermal modelling and data acquisition in horizontal configurations. This work provides valuable insights into the internal thermal dynamics of horizontally configured electric water heater storage devices, widely used worldwide.

Why taxi tracking trumps tracking passengers with apps in planning for the electrification of Africa's paratransit.

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 acceptable for transport planning, it is inadequate for planning for electrification. Combustion engine vehicles have long ranges and refill fast. Drivers and fuel outlets have existed in a symbiotic relationship without the bondage of needing detailed mobility information and planning. With electrification, battery-powered vehicles have become inextricably coupled to roadside infrastructure through their mobility patterns. We compare the current state of public transport data with vehicle tracking data for forecasting the electrification of Africa's paratransit. Discrepancies between them highlight the problem with using incomplete and/or unreliable data to estimate a city's peak load, pointing to a need for vehicle-based data acquisition.

When usage matters: time-of-use analysis of Cape Town's Day Zero drought response.

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. Many studies have measured demand response to a drought at a coarse time resolution, but few have measured it at an hourly resolution or compared weekday with weekend use. In this study we evaluated households' hourly time-of-use behaviour in response to the Cape Town drought at two prominent inflection points identified by previous studies: the announcement of the Critical Water Shortages Disaster Plan in October 2017 and the introduction of Level 6B restrictions in February 2018. The first major reduction was caused by residents reducing their usage by about a third in the early morning and evening hours on weekdays, and the second, even larger, reduction was achieved in the mid-morning hours on weekdays when home owners were not at home but ensured that domestic workers used water sparingly.

Water scarcity and poverty: The lasting impact of a maintenance campaign at South African schools across the affluence divide.

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, and the latter comprised an information campaign and an information and competition campaign. The impacts of these were assessed immediately after the interventions. This paper revisits the maintenance results by assessing the difference in responses according to affluence levels of the schools, and by evaluating the impacts one year after the campaigns. We find that the poorer schools were not able to sustain the maintenance gains, especially at the primary schools.

Pandemic and bills: The impact of COVID-19 on energy usage of schools in South Africa.

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 inter alia transport and office buildings. A beneficial consequence of carbon footprint reductions is the ability to measure the differential demand of occupants, to benchmark the base load of 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.

Temporal case study of household behavioural response to Cape Town's "Day Zero" using smart meter data.

Faced with the threat of "Day Zero", when it was feared that Cape Town's taps could run dry, consumers reduced household water usage from 540 to 280 L per household per day over the 36 months between January 2015 and January 2018. This paper describes the events that prompted this reduction. We look at how changes in water use were affected by official announcements and by public engagement with this news via the social media activity and internet searches. We analysed the water usage of a subset of middle to high income households where smart hot and cold water meters were installed. For hot water usage patterns we compared meter readings with that in another area unaffected by the drought. We further map our cold water smart meter readings against that of the City of Cape Town's municipal data for domestic freestanding households - a sample of more than 400,000 households. We found that the introduction of Level 5 restrictions had a perverse effect on consumption, possibly due to confusing messages. The most dramatic change in behaviour appears to have been instigated by a media storm and consequent user panic after the release of the City's Critical Water Shortages Disaster Plan in October 2017. However, contradictory communication from national and provincial government eroded some of this gain. The paper concludes with recommendations for demand management in a similar future scenario.