NISSAN has announced its support of a South African boarding school near Pretoria with the installation of a sustainable energy system leveraging the power of Nissan Intelligent Mobility technology.
As part of its commitment to furthering the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, Nissan has been working with Filadelfia School to improve its access to reliable electricity and increase its use of renewable energy. While the national grid provides energy access to 85% of the population, capacity and connection constraints in South Africa mean the school regularly experiences unscheduled energy “blackouts”. As a boarding school attended exclusively by over 400 disabled students aged between 14-21, Filadelfia School is particularly sensitive to such disruptive events. Using a combination of second-life batteries from Nissan LEAF vehicles and solar panels, the school now has a sustainable energy system that helps mitigate the impact of electricity shortages on the school community.
“We have several energy outages a month, usually for a few hours, but sometimes for a full day” says Filadelfia School Principal Mr. Derrick Peete. “Daily operations like using PCs, brail printing for our visually impaired students, or simply cooking become troublesome in the face of energy blackouts. So reliable access to electricity is vital to us” he added.
Part of its mission to create a “cleaner, safer, fairer” world, Nissan is addressing the issue of energy resilience through a variety of pilot projects around the world. Earth Hour, an annual global event organized by WWF since 2007, aims to unify people behind the idea of saving the Earth through symbolically switching off their lights and taking action on climate change.