ENERGISE…INCENTIVISE…

ECONOMISE.

Standard Electrical

In South Africa, land of eternal sun and power shortages, energy saving is critical and solar that sleeping giant, slowly attracting support.

Meantime almost all electricity production comes from state-owned utility Eskom, struggling to keep up with demand.

Shortages in 2008 led to rolling blackouts, disrupting manufacturing and the crucial mining industry. Eskom says it risks running out of electricity while it builds two coal power stations. And even when open the country will need more energy capacity by 2019 or again face rolling blackouts.

“The economy is being strangled and we need to release the red tape on renewable energy usage,” says Gary Abrahamson, MD of Standard Electrical of Johannesburg, one of South Africa’s largest electrical contracting companies and a leading innovator in energy saving and renewables.

Freed from growth hobbling regulations, Standard Electrical, like the national economy, would skyrocket. “We could grow this business 100% per annum for the next three to five years. There’s no limit to how big we could grow. You can make energy savings in every building you walk in to.”

Standard Electrical’s speciality is installation and energy efficiency, deploying new technology lighting and solar power. Making impressive gains, a monitoring system using motion sensors and linked to air conditioners and now being installed into all client buildings.

“As a result you can tell how many kilowatt hours you use per month and the maximum demand. By monitoring the pulse of the building we analyse how efficient it is. So the temperature in an unoccupied room would be allowed to rise three degrees in summer and go down by the same amount in winter - an energy saving on the air conditioning as well.

In a country where power shortfalls are a major and continuing constraint on stability and expansion, leading contractor Standard Electrical is returning exponential growth. And says MD Gary Abrahamson, the possibilities are limitless. So what is standing in the way? Mike Dunbar reports.

Standard Electrical have been involved in the first Photovoltaic car park system in the country of 75KW at the Eskom Megawatt Park Head Office

Standard Electrical

“This is how we achieve up to 50% savings in a building. On new buildings we can achieve even more - 33% of what they were running at six years ago.

“By putting your buildings meters online on our unique site, we can constantly monitor your building to make sure you are getting the maximum potential from your savings.”

Standard Energy is working with the British company Solarcentury, one of Europe’s fastest-growing and most innovative solar photovoltaics (PV) companies. And Abrahamson, 63, knows about opportunity and growth.

His father Hymie started the business in 1946, and when Gary took it over in 1978 Standard Electrical’s payroll was just eight. Today it employs more than three hundred, and turns over R300- 400 million.

In early 1980s he was growing the business organically at a time when the gold price was rocketing and the mining sector booming. Then in 1987 he bought his first company and moved into a new and bigger league. ”I realised there was a much easier way to grow and that was by acquisition, and in the next nine years I bought eleven electrical companies.” By the time boom dived into recession Standard had already anticipated the market for retro fitting. “We knew we had to get out there and start

selling ourselves. But with the finest name in the industry it hasn’t been difficult.”

Standard Electrical delivers a total skills package across a wide commercial and industrial field – office blocks, warehouses, shopping centres, hotels and factories. And against the power critical backdrop – and the Government’s pledge to reduce South Africa’s domestic greenhouse gas emissions trajectory by 34 percent before 2020 - Standard Electrical launched a new division, Standard Energy. And it is setting the pace.

“We have a genuine concern for the environment. By raising awareness of the benefits of saving energy we can help reduce strain on the grid by reducing consumption and help reduce the environmental impact from the development sector. And most importantly retrofits are financially viable, with paybacks in most cases less than three years.”

Standard has just completed 130 basements, saving 55 gigawatts in power over three years with Eskom – which requires companies to make a 20% cut in consumption - paying for the full retro-fit. “I was able to go to a client and say, ‘I’ll save you 68% of your energy in a basement, save R5,000 per hundred fittings per month, I’ll do it for nothing and you’ll have a three year warranty.’ It was a no-brainer.”

Standard Electrical

Abrahamson says success like this is the result of smart engineering. “No one has ever done it like this, and now people are copying us. We’ve always been the mavericks and trail blazers in new technology.

“I’ve always had a passion for lighting.” A regular visitor to lighting shows in Europe and America Abrahamson has always kept ahead of latest developments. And it was in the USA five years ago that he discovered a new fluorescent lighting technology with which he was to revolutionise power saving in South Africa and catapult Standard into the Green front line.

Using reflectors and a smaller bulb, a 400 watt fitting for instance could be replaced by a 200 watt while extending the conventional operational range by up to 400%. He brought it back to South Africa, had the fitting made and began installing the technology into a small number of warehouses.

“The whole industry was watching me saying it would never work. In fact it cut the energy used in the old technology by half. It was the first thing I did, and today 90% of warehouses and factories built in South Africa use this technology.”

Training accounts for between one and two per cent of annual turnover. Part of the Black Empowerment group

Crowie Holdings since 2010, Abrahamson says Standard Electrical has been up-skilling the previously disadvantaged for the last twenty years. “Even in the apartheid period we saw the need to do this. If you can get a much larger Black middle class you will have a more stable country. And this is what we have strived for.”

Abrahamson is emphatic about the reasons for success; a highly skilled workforce and the ability to carry out and execute energy efficient installations in both new buildings and retro-fits. “We understand lighting and we understand energy. Put those two things together and you have a winning formula.

“You get lighting engineers who understand lighting and energy engineers who understand energy. But there are not many who can put the two into one package as we can. And this has kept us ahead in the field.

“We deliver on what we promise and there are very few companies out there who have done that. Some have gone to clients and promised a 50% saving and on completion delivered only 20%. We are able to calculate and predict, see where, why and at what time energy is being wasted, and address the problem. On innovation and value we deliver without compromise.”

Standard Electricalwww.stanlec.co.za+27 11 624 1010

Written by Mike Dunbar

www.littlegatepublishing.com