2 days ago
Hermanus teen's solar app powers a win at electric vehicle showcase
Connor Lewis, a pupil from Curro Hermanus, has built an app that calculates the exact wattage of solar panels needed to charge an electric vehicle.
At EV Now's EVs on Display showcase in Hermanus, a glossy lineup that included a Tesla and a Powerade-blue electric G-Wagon drew plenty of stares. But the most impressive piece of engineering came from a 17-year-old who, in two hours, built an app that could help South Africans figure out exactly how to power their electric cars through solar energy.
The event itself was organised as an electric vehicle showcase – a chance for the public to touch, prod and test-drive without the usual sales patter. The most meaningful component was a competition launched among high school pupils four months earlier, aimed at myth-busting EVs and giving young brains the space to design something genuinely useful.
Seven of the eight high schools in the Overstrand area signed up, tackling categories such as essays, infographics and app building. In the end, one entry stood out: a working piece of software that could have easily come from a professional developer's desk.
The two hour build
Connor Lewis from Curro Hermanus took the crown with an app that calculates the exact wattage of solar panels needed to charge an electric vehicle.
The app pulls data from your home solar system (maximum output in kilowatts), factors in your location for both real-time and average weather conditions, and matches that against your vehicle's battery specs. If your EV isn't on the preloaded list, you can add it manually. The result is a real-time calculation of how fast you can charge and how long it will take, under average conditions.
Lewis didn't lean on AI, existing templates or a friendly adult with a coding background. 'I wrote it in two hours,' he said, in the same tone someone might use to describe making a sandwich.
'I've been coding and tinkering with code for many years now,' he said. 'Very basic in Grade 5, and then at the start of high school around Grade 8, I started getting into proper programming languages like Java and Python.'
Hermanus mayor Archie Klaas handed Lewis his prize – a R10,000 electric scooter – at a special ceremony during the showcase. The mayor pointed out that the EV shift will be led by the young people of today. 'Younger generations naturally embrace such changes,' he said.
'I think there's a lot of potential for EVs,' Lewis said. 'Currently, the biggest issue is the infrastructure that charges them, as well as battery density. If we can sort those two problems out, then EVs are definitely the future.'
EV momentum in the Western Cape
It would be easy to treat this as a charming local-boy-done-good story and move on. But Connor's app is a microcosm of the type of innovation South Africa will need if it wants to make EVs mainstream rather than a niche hobby for the wealthy.
The Western Cape is establishing itself as the country's EV leader. Golden Arrow Bus Service has begun rolling out 120 electric buses, 20 of which are already in service, following a successful pilot.
'In the public transport sector, the shift to electric vehicles is critical to achieving sustainable mobility for commuters and creating economic opportunities and job creation in various sectors of the province,' said Isaac Sileku, the Western Cape minister of mobility.
Government motor transport is adding hybrids and battery electrics to its fleet, aiming for 2.5% new energy vehicles this year. Charging infrastructure is sprouting across the province, albeit slowly, with 55 stations, 18 of them DC fast chargers.
Yet, for all the planning and roadmaps, the gap between policy and personal adoption is still wide. This is where projects like Connor's come in – tools that empower people to make more sense of EV ownership.
What this means for you
Instead of guessing whether your solar setup can handle an EV, apps like Connor's can give you hard numbers before you spend a cent;
The next wave of practical EV solutions may not come from big corporations but from small-scale problem solvers;
As tools like this make EV ownership less intimidating, the move away from petrol and diesel becomes more realistic for households; and
Every coder, technician and designer working on EV tech strengthens South Africa's green economy.
A glimpse of the future
What makes Connor's win notable isn't just that he beat out dozens of other entries or that he wrote the app in less time than a Sanral meeting takes. It's that he created a functional bridge between two of the country's most urgent realities: a rapidly warming climate and a creaking, unreliable grid.
A 2015 study by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research predicted that by 2050 nearly half of Cape Town's vehicles could be electric. If that happens, the demand for home charging solutions will skyrocket.
'Billions of rands leave South Africa to buy fuel, to buy oil and to find fuel from countries like Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. We feel that we want to keep that money in South Africa, so that there is more money to go around. Despite Eskom, which is one of our biggest polluters, it's still cleaner to drive an EV than to drive a petrol diesel car,' Justus Visagie, EVs on Display co-organiser, said.
Gerrit Kruiswijk, the other organiser of the showcase, said that targeting young people matters. 'With South Africa, in the very early stages of electric vehicle adoption, it is so important that we start educating the youth. They are going to make future decisions on buying vehicles, not only for themselves, but for their parents and your grandparents,' he said.
Kruiswijk believes that Hermanus itself could become a model for EV-led transport. With traffic jams choking the town during tourist season, the vision includes electric buses and shuttles, taking inspiration from Oslo's clean transit systems, to turn the town into a pioneer in South African EV adoption. DM
