Eastern Cape-born innovator and inventor Sandiswa Qayi has expanded operations to scale a new smart geyser sleeve to save electricity – the HotSpot.
Qayi’s silicon geyser sleeve has been years in the making and has been stored in many households.
However, the device is ready for its next step into the mainstream, with the company confident it could be beneficial to more South African homes.
The HotSpot is fitted to a geyser’s element to heat water within the tank. It can efficiently heat only the required amount of water a household needs.
Qayi, the owner and managing director of her company, AET Africa, which produces the HotSpot, said switching off a geyser may not necessarily save any power.
However, the HotSpot makes switching off a geyser power efficient. The amount of hot water needed channels through the sleeve and into the home’s output of taps and other plumbing.
“By switching a geyser on and off as many people do only affects your electricity bill as only certain kinds of geysers can save power by turning them off and on, during strategic times during the day,” Qayi said.
Without the HotSpot, many geysers will have to reheat all the water in a geyser once turned off, meaning it would consume the same amount of energy to restore the water to usable heat.
Since launching her invention, Qayi has witnessed scores of successes, including support and funding from the Department of Science and Technology’s Grassroots Innovation programme, which supports local inventions such as the HotSpot.
Qayi has made more inroads into making the HotSpot viable for mainstream usage, including a smarter HotSpot that will allow users to monitor energy consumption better when using the HotSpot in a smart home.
“We are collaborating with a Cape Town company manufacturing meters to pilot their energy meters with the HotSpot as we are targeting smart homes now.
“Customers will be able to quantify energy consumption and energy savings from the geyser, not the entire household, as they often miss out on the savings from the HotSpot because they changed behaviour in other areas of the house, which makes it difficult to verify how much they saved from Hotspot,” Qayi said.
In addition, Qayi told IOL that her company, AET Africa, was rebranding the product through Green Tag recertification to make it greener in terms of the raw materials used.
Qayi said AET Africa was in the process of upgrading facilities, responsible for designing and producing the HotSpot.
“We are also busy upgrading our in-house lab and we have appointed a polymer technologist to make sure we deliver on our promise to save customers money and offer them convenience, accessibility and affordable energy solutions,” Qayi said.
IOL Tech