Generator – News, Research and Analysis – The Conversation

August 7, 2026

You might be buying the wrong home battery. Here’s how to tell

Jena Glover, Griffith University; Mohammad Sanjari, Griffith University; Peyman Akhgar, Griffith University, and Ruby Michael, Griffith University

Four experts explain why the design of your home matters more than the size of your home battery.

Solar powered water heaters on rooftops above shacks in the Alexandra township in Johannesburg, South Africa. Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg via Getty Images

January 20, 2023

Power cuts in South Africa: trend to get off the grid is gathering pace, but total independence is still a way off

Hartmut Winkler, University of Johannesburg

Installing enough solar panels and battery storage to see a household through a week without sunshine isn’t yet financially possible.

In order to support his young family, William Faulkner took a job shoveling coal at a power plant on Ole Miss’s campus. Mussklprozz/Wikimedia Commons

January 14, 2016

Under the spell of a generator’s thrum, a Faulkner masterpiece was born

Jay Watson, University of Mississippi

Slated to be demolished this year, a crumbling brick building on Ole Miss’ campus once operated as a power plant where novelist William Faulkner shoveled coal – and feverishly wrote.

A solar water heating unit on the roof of a home in Kuyasa outside Cape Town. South Africa has a long way to go to get people off the grid and onto solar heating. Epa/Nic Bothma

November 9, 2015

Advances in getting solar onto the grid, and into the home

Wilfred Fritz, Cape Peninsula University of Technology and Deon Kallis, Cape Peninsula University of Technology

Africa is blessed with an abundance of sunshine.Given the heavy demand for energy, alternatives, such as solar, could provide solutions and help stimulate economic growth.

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