The first article “Promoting energy efficiency in a South African University” is a case study which identifies the challenges facing universities when adopting energy-efficiency. There are also enablers to achieving energy-efficiency targets. “Scoping exercise to determine load profile archetype reference shapes for solar co-generation models in isolated off-grid rural African villages” reports on a scoping exercise in order to determine realistic hourly reference profile shapes for thermal and power energy consumption in isolated rural African villages. The results offer realistic energy consumption load profiles for a typical rural African village in time-series format. “Varying percentages of full uniform shading of a PV module in a controlled environment yields linear power reduction”, using the shading experiment, six different shade nets were quantified. A 36% shade net resulted in a 56% output power reduction. A 63% shade net yielded 82% power reduction The next article “Determination of oxidation characteristics and decomposition kinetics of some Nigerian biomass”. The combustion characteristics and decomposition kinetics of the biomass samples under oxidative conditions were studied. The thermal decomposition process showed distinctly the regions of moisture loss, structural decomposition and char combustion stages. “Ranking South African provinces on the basis of MERRA 2D surface incident shortwave flux”. The main objective of the present study is to rank South African provinces on the basis of incoming solar radiation.
