Rupert Gouws

North West University Potchefstroom, School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, Faculty Member

Followers

166

Following

Public Views

Prof Rupert Gouws is presently a full professor in the School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering at the North-West University (NWU), Potchefstroom. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. After completion of his studies, he joined a company Energy Cybernetics where he was involved with energy audits, measurement and verification activities and energy related research activities. He consulted to a variety of industry and public sectors in South Africa and other countries in the fields of energy engineering and energy management. He received an Institutional Teaching Excellence Award from the NWU and was involved in various undergraduate modules for all year groups. Apart from lecturing, he also mentors students that are busy with their Master’s studies, PhD studies and Postdoctoral fellowships. He specialises in the fields of electrical energy management, electrical energy efficiency, electrical machines - energy optimization, and power electronics - energy optimization. He currently has a National Research Foundation (NRF) rating status of Established Researcher. He has authored and co-authored more than 100 publications in peer-reviewed international journals and peer-reviewed international conference proceedings. He received awards for the most productive junior and senior researcher within the NWU Faculty of Engineering. He is active on research evaluation panels for various international journals and serve as external examiner for various institutions. He has an established network of partners within the university, local industries, and international collaborators. He acted as a member of the Faculty Board of the Faculty of Engineering at the NWU as well as a member of the Research Entities Evaluation Committee of the NWU. The Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA) registered him as a Professional Engineer (Pr.Eng) and the Association of Energy Engineers (AEE) certified him as a Certified Measurement and Verification Professional (CMVP). Furthermore, he holds membership with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers (SAIEE).

less

InterestsView All (6)

Uploads

Papers by Rupert Gouws

Development of a novel intelligent controlled energy efficient industrial in-line warm heating system

Development of a novel intelligent controlled energy efficient industrial in-line warm heating sy... more

Download

Development of a novel adaptive controlled solar energy dryer, equipped with an electric motorised system

Development of a novel adaptive controlled solar energy dryer, equipped with an electric motorise... more

Download

Development of a novel optimal efficiency single phase motor specific power factor correction system

Download

Development of a novel highly energy efficient controlled cooling holder for vaccine storage

Download

Non-intrusive condition monitoring of power cables within the industrial sector / Nie-indringende monitering van elektriese kabels in die industriële sektor om faling en

Student Symposium in Science / Studentesimposium in die Natuurwetenskappe, 2014

Efficiency analysis of a three-phase power transformer for industry applications operated under different

Electricity + Control, 2015

Demand Response Implementation and Control for Split Unit Air Conditioners

IEEE EECCMC, 2017

The national power grid cannot continuously meet the demand of the country’s energy needs. Curren... more The national power grid cannot continuously meet the demand of the country’s energy needs. Currently the solution is to implement load shedding, which switches off power supply to certain parts of the national grid to reduce the demand. HVAC (heating, ventilation and cooling) is the largest area in the commercial sector where load reduction can make a noticeable difference, thus it is a sector where immense improvements can be made. Using the energy efficient demand side management initiative to implement demand response for cooling in the commercial sector can create a clear load reduction on the national grid and has the opportunity to decrease complete load shedding. This projects aims for the design and development of a plug and play device with bare minimum installation effort for split unit air conditioners to monitor and control the energy usage and settings to improve energy efficiency and also allow demand response to lower demand in accordance with energy supply capabilities of the national grid. The system consists of a single main unit in a commercial office building, which controls all the other components in the system, and a room unit which controls a split unit air conditioner located in an office of the building, thus for every conditioner there is a room unit.

Intelligent Automated Steam Trap Monitoring System

IEEE EECCMC, 2017

Steam used in industrial plants is generated by means of a boiler system and as the steam passes ... more Steam used in industrial plants is generated by means of a boiler system and as the steam passes through piping, the steam will condense. Steam traps are mechanical devices used to drain the condensate to avoid waterlogging. Faulty steam traps are hard to detect and may go completely unnoticed. A nonintrusive automated steam trap failure monitoring and detection system was designed to improve production efficiency while lowering the strain on the electrical grid. The proposed solution utilises a K-Type thermocouple for accurate high temperature measurements, a piezo-electric microphone immune to external noise to intelligently ”listen” for a steam trap failure through an ARM processor capable of digital signal processing and filtering. An Android application is developed to alert the user of the steam trap status and its temperature while wireless data communication enables uploading system performance data to a remote server.

Power Electronics-View of the Past and Illumination of the Future

North-West University, 2021

The developments in the power electronics industry has over the years hinged on the progress of t... more The developments in the power electronics industry has over the years hinged on the progress of the semiconductor device industry. The semiconductor device industry could be said to be on the edge of a turn into a new era, a paradigm shift from the conventional silicon devices to the wide band gap semiconductor technologies. This inaugural lecture provides a summary of the past, the current state-of-the-art, and highlight the opportunities for future improvements in this field.

Current switching device development to characterise and monitor a proton exchange membrane water electrolyser

International Conference on Electrolysis (ICE), 2022

High hydrogen purity, low gas cross overs, high product efficiencies and accelerated load respons... more High hydrogen purity, low gas cross overs, high product efficiencies and accelerated load response times has been the incentive for escalating interests and research conducted on proton exchange membrane (PEM) water electrolysis. It is regarded as one of the most prominent methods for hydrogen production during integration with zero-carbon electricity sources. Furthermore, meticulous characterization techniques have been developed to provide intricate insight on the analysis of the physical, chemical and electrochemical processes that occurs during operation. This research project will focus on two of these techniques namely electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and the current interrupt (CI) method. EIS is a powerful tool that measures the relationship between the current and applied voltage across a specified range of frequencies. It provides sufficient information on the individual contributions towards the total impedance within an electrochemical system being monitored. However, this method utilizes quite complex and bulky testing equipment and analysis software that makes the technique quite expensive to use. Thus, it is imperative to implement a method that utilizes less expensive and complex testing- and analyses equipment that will successfully characterize a PEM water electrolyser delivering results that is in close correlation to that of EIS. Therefore, the CI method is further investigated by designing, modelling and implementing a PEM water electrolyser system that will imitate the CI technique both in the simulation and practical environment.

Modelling a Motor Cooling System with Stator Lamination Fins

2023 IEEE 64th International Scientific Conference on Power and Electrical Engineering of Riga Technical University (RTUCON), 2023

This work investigates the potential for cooling a radial permanent magnet motor by means of stat... more This work investigates the potential for cooling a radial permanent magnet motor by means of stator lamination fins. To form the fins, certain stator laminations have a larger external diameter. The optimal number of fins, as well as fm thickness, was determined to reach the maximal heat transfer between the motor stator and the coolant. Finite element and computational fluid dynamics modelling were used to calculate the thermal performance of the motor.

Novel intelligent energy management system for residential PV systems in non-feed-in tariff countries

Currently within South Africa and other developing countries, net-metering policies are not yet w... more Currently within South Africa and other developing countries, net-metering policies are not yet widely implemented which hinders the adoption of residential PV systems. Without proper net-metering policies in place, the benefits of residential PV systems are limited to self-consumption as all energy fed into the utility grid is lost without remuneration. This leads to an inefficient and non-profitable PV system. To improve the efficiency and feasibility of the PV system in countries with no feed-in policy, it is of utmost importance that an energy management system (EMS) that optimises self-consumption, of the generated energy, be employed. A new intelligent PV EMS is proposed in this paper which takes historical data of energy consumption and forecasted weather information thereby optimising the energy consumption off the utility grid. Experimental results obtained from a real-world system showed that the local energy consumption percentage increased by 15- 20% when compared to a PV system with no EMS

Efficiency analysis of a three-phase power transformer

Using Dynamic Model of Pem-Fuel Cell Supplying the Load by the Z-Source Inverter with a Novel Control Strategy

Download

Condition monitoring of active magnetic bearing systems

Comparative Thermal and Demagnetization Analysis of the PM Machines with Neodymium and Ferrite Magnets

Energies, Jun 20, 2022

Download

Optimal switching-flux motor design and its cogging effect reduction

This paper presents an optimal switching-flux motor design in terms of cheap cost, simple manufac... more This paper presents an optimal switching-flux motor design in terms of cheap cost, simple manufacturing process, and easy maintenance. The high cogging effect and its impact on the performance of the machine is studied by measuring the following electromechanical characteristics of the machine in both generating and motoring regimes: cogging torque, electromagnetic torque and induced voltage. The results showed that high cogging torque negatively affect the performance of the machine. The goal of the research was to reduce the cogging torque of the motor without changing the shapes of permanent magnets and magnetic poles, and to avoid any implementation of the magnetic shunts or magnetic bars into the machine. Parametric analysis of the outer rotor configuration with different air-gap diameters showed the optimal machine design which offered: five times lower cogging torque, 8 percent increase in electromagnetic torque, 24 percent decrease in volume, and 33 percent decrease in copper mass compared to initial design of the machine. Additional recommendations on the motor improvements based on Finite Element Analysis (FEA) are also provided.

Measurement and verification of load shifting interventions for a fridge plant system in South Africa

Journal of Energy in Southern Africa, Feb 1, 2013

In this paper, the author presents the measurement and verification methodology used to quantify ... more In this paper, the author presents the measurement and verification methodology used to quantify the impacts of load shifting measures that are implemented on large industrial fridge plant systems in South Africa. A summary on the operation of fridge plant systems and the data typically available for baseline development is provided. The author discusses issues surrounding baseline development and service level adjustments for the following two scenarios: 1) the electrical data is available for both the baseline and post-implementation periods; and 2) only the thermal data is available during the baseline period, but both the thermal and electrical data is available during the post-implementation period. Typical results are provided with advantages and disadvantages of both methodologies.

Fuel allocation and lockout system

2018 IEEE International Conference on Industrial Electronics for Sustainable Energy Systems (IESES), 2018

In transport and Logistics business with the fierce competition, avoiding fuel theft through moni... more In transport and Logistics business with the fierce competition, avoiding fuel theft through monitoring and management is a major concern in Africa. With the steadily increase in fuel price, fuel theft and fraud poses a serious threat to transporters' operating profits. In this paper the development of a secure fuel dispensing system with a digital fuelling record book is presented for the use of fleet based companies. The proposed system prevents the refuel of unauthorised vehicles, notifies the owner any time a vehicle is refuelled, with information containing the vehicle name, date and amount of fuel dispensed into the vehicle. The vehicle identification is done by the use of low-frequency radio frequency identifier (RFID) tags. A fuel lockout system is implemented to shut down the fuel pump. The system uploads the fuel data to a server in custom hourly intervals chosen by the user. The design flow and experimental results for a prototype system is presented.

Data logger and companion application for time-of-use electricity

2018 IEEE International Conference on Industrial Electronics for Sustainable Energy Systems (IESES), 2018

Electricity generation is becoming more expensive, hence Time-of-Use (ToU) electricity tariff str... more Electricity generation is becoming more expensive, hence Time-of-Use (ToU) electricity tariff structures, such as Eskom Megaflex are implemented. The companion application is an integrated solution designed for use with such schemes. A hardware module logs consumed power from a smart power meter and saves it on an external storage. The logged data is transferred to an Android application where it is displayed visually in the form of graphs. These visual indicators can assist end-users to improve their electricity usage at strategic times, ensuring financial savings, as well as increased grid stability. The proposed design was constructed and implemented on an actual smart-power meter. Results from the tests carried out to ensure compliance with the requirements are presented together with the design overview.