Voith’s global training program, HydroSchool, is being used in Africa to help educate local staff to obtain a qualification in their field of hydropower expertise. HydroSchool contains tailor-made solutions for developing countries and the company’s trainings across Africa showcases the progress.
In South Africa the pumped storage plant at Ingula is the largest of its kind in Africa. After the commissioning in 2016, Voith was awarded by the plant operator South African state energy company Eskom to train local staff to operate and maintain the new plant. Voith started in the middle of 2017 the largest HydroSchool training program for hydropower plant operators in its history. Since then, the company has been training around 70 Eskom employees, from technicians through to managers, to fulfil their individual responsibilities. The project will be finished in mid-2018.
Ingula is the first new pumped storage project in South Africa for over 25 years. The complete electro-mechanical equipment was supplied by Voith. Now, the four pumped storage units at Ingula help to significantly stabilize the electricity network of South Africa.
In West Africa, Liberia specifically, Voith trained 20 employees from the Liberian electricity provider Liberia Electricity Corporation for the Mount Coffee hydropower plant operation in 2016. The plant began feeding power into the grid in early-2017 following an enhancing modernization. Voith helped its customer to acquire the knowledge it needs for a long-term, efficient and safe operation of its plant.
Following extensive upgrades, the Mount Coffee hydropower plant went into operation in the beginning of 2017. Voith played a major role in this project, supplying new Francis turbines, generators, the control technology and the electrical and mechanical power plant equipment. It makes a crucial contribution to Liberia’s economic transformation and delivering a sustainable progress for the population of the West African country.
And in East Africa’s Tanzania Voith took part at the German Hydro Development Days in October 2017. The event provided professional and technical capacities to companies in the Tanzanian hydropower sector and political decision-makers. Voith trained the participants in the planning and construction of small hydropower plants, taking particular account of the requirements for decentralized power generation in Africa. Topics were for example the selection of the right electro-mechanical equipment and the enabling of low-pitch potentials using compact, robust technologies.
The German Hydro Development Days took place as part of the Export Initiative Energy of the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy (BMWi). Facilitator is the German Association for International Cooperation (GIZ). The goal is to establish and strengthen German-Tanzanian business partnerships.