Trains and training are the bane of an Eskom boss
● When Yangaphe Ngcashi took over the reins at Majuba power station 18 months ago, this six-pack behemoth was running at an energy availability factor (EAF) of 49%.
Over the past year, Ngcashi has managed to recover 1,000MW of power and move Majuba to an EAF of 60%. And he doesn’t plan to stop there.
“This is a very interesting power station to run. You have to wear different hats … We also have a nature reserve here. We have two endangered species — the sungazer lizard and a type of bull frog. One of my biggest tasks is to protect them,” Ngcashi told the Sunday Times.
Construction on Majuba started in 1983, but Ngchashi notes that evolving environmental concerns mean that to save the lizards and frogs, it could not have been built on the same spot today.
Ngcashi has worked for Eskom for 24 years, all of it in generation. This, he says, helped when he arrived at Majuba, near Volksrust in Mpumalanga.
“In my time I worked in different roles in all the critical areas of power plants — from maintenance to outages — which helps me a lot today.”
When you are at the top of your station’s management pyramid, it is helpful to know how it works all the way down.
“When I arrived there was a multitude of problems that had to be solved urgently. We had a lot of people who left Majuba for jobs outside.”
With this skills exodus the station was left in the lurch.
“From the start my focus here was on the skills I had to help build and shape on both sides — Eskom employees and contractors,” Ngcashi said.
“You can’t differentiate between the two when you do training. A contractor might not get the next tender, but he is still in the country and doesn’t lose the training he received. He might get a tender at another station or join an outfit that has one, so that training still benefits Eskom.”
Ngcashi said proper training is crucial in avoiding the “unplanned outages” often cited as the reasons for load-shedding.
“We have to continuously build on this, including management. When we do this training we put our people under pressure, because they need to be able to use their acquired skills under such pressure.
“In the past the slowing down of such training has impacted our performance a lot. Eskom used to have a reputation for excellence when it came to the training we did. We need to get back to that space.”
Ngcashi is working hard at improving efficiency at Majuba. “This is an ongoing project and within the next three to five years I hope we will be where I want us to be.”
When he arrived, the biggest problem was the condition of the mills that grind and dry the coal before it is fed into the boilers.
“Our mills were very far behind as far as maintenance was concerned. I could hardly run a unit without supporting it with fuel oil, and they kept tripping. Once I wrapped my head around the problem I started realising it was a people issue. Our people lacked the necessary skills.”
To solve that, he had to drastically improve the training.
“It took long hours and working around the clock to get to where we are now. Going from 49% to 60% is a significant improvement,” Ngcashi said.
He is determined to do even better: “Currently I am working on a project that will give us another five percentage points on our EAF by the end of this financial year. Our target is to run on an EAF of between 65% and 70% by then,” he says.
Another challenge is coal deliveries.
“We don’t have a dedicated mine and Transnet is not doing well. We get our coal through trucking. As you approached Majuba you will have seen the many, many trucks waiting to deliver.”
The trucks are trying to make up for the supply gap left by the ailing Transnet.
“Transnet used to give me five or six trains of coal. Now it is only two or three. Together with the trucks, that barely covers our needs. We are working with the minister of electricity to resolve this issue.”
Ngcashi grew up in Welkom in the Free State and went to Bodibeng High in Kroonstad. His grandparents raised him.
“Originally our family was from the Eastern Cape. We are Xhosa, but I am a real Free Stater,” he laughs.
“I matriculated in 1989 and then I worked a little bit on a mine in Welkom before going to Wits where I studied electrical engineering and finished my master’s.”
After his studies he started working for Anglo American as a junior engineer.
“This was more training than anything else. After two years of this I went to Telkom. In this time I lived in Bloemfontein and mainly did emergency systems.”
Ngcashi joined Eskom in 1999 at Koeberg. He worked there as a technician for five years before moving to Kendal as an engineer for a further five years and then Majuba for five years and then on to Kriel, “just before the 2010 Soccer World Cup”.
“I was with Bruce Moyo, the current general manager of Tutuka station, to recover two units. Bruce was running outages and projects and fetched me at Kriel to go help him,” he says.
“After we had recovered the units I came back to Majuba. I was engineering manager, then maintenance manager, and after that outage manager.”
Ngcashi says he has a great deal of faith in the 15,000-strong Eskom workforce.
“Most people who work at power plants go there for the right reason — to generate power in a time of crisis. We are working hard to turn Eskom around and we will, just watch this space.”