Offshore Wind integration with the stand-alone electric grid at Oil and Gas Offshore Installations

VIKINGS: Offshore Wind Integration within the Stand-alone Electric Grid at Oil and Gas Offshore Installations There are great incentives to apply Norwegian world leading floating wind technology to reduce CO2/NOX emissions from oil and gas (O&G) installations on the Norwegian Continent Shelf (NCS). The primary objective of this project: Offshore Wind Integration within the Stand-alone Electric Grid at Oil and Gas Offshore Installations (VIKINGS) is to identify and propose solutions to reduce the risks in the integration of a floating wind farm to an O&G installation as a supplemental power supply to reduce NOX and CO2 emissions. The project partners are: Equinor, SINTEF Energy (SINTEF) and Siemens. VIKINGS has been partly funded by the Research Council of Norway for four years from 1st January 2016 to 16th December 2019. Directly connecting offshore wind power to the stand-alone electric grid of an offshore O&G installation has many challenges. The VIKINGS project includes four deliverables: System design, Operational control strategies, Simulations and Laboratory demonstrations. The methodology is to identify the potential bottlenecks by using both simulations and experimental investigation. Both the numerical simulations and the experimental tests have provided insight into the frequency and voltage transients. Furthermore, the simulation tools and the experimental setup developed during the VIKINGS project are effective tools for further studying the wind power integration within the stand-alone electric grid at oil and gas installations.

VIKINGS has opened a fundamentally new paradigm for the future investigation of wind power supply for the stand-alone electric grid at O&G installations: -Improved simulation models & cost effective laboratory demonstrations The first Laboratory demonstrations: validated the simulation results in an environment one step closer to the real world -The case studies have shown the effectiveness of the proposed control strategies to mitigate the risks of grid stability under various operational contingencies

The Norwegian electricity consumption is almost entirely supplied by renewables, mainly hydro power. In contrast, the offshore oil and gas (OG) production in Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS) is almost entirely powered by fossil fuel giving substantial emissions of greenhouse gasses. More ever, OG installations reaching tail production, heavy oil, deep water, and long distance to shore tend to increase the power consumption and emissions per produced oil unit. In total about 25 % of the CO2-emissions from Norway origin from power production and gas compression in the petroleum sector. Radically new energy solutions for OG installations are needed to raise energy efficiency and reduce CO2 emissions. Applying floating wind turbines close to offshore OG installations are one such new energy solution. Floating wind turbines are already demonstrated as a viable technology through projects in Norway, UK, Portugal and Japan, but the combination with OG is new. This has great potential for increasing energy efficiency and reducing emissions from offshore OG installations. A desktop study has shown the potential for achieving 40% reduction of CO2/NOx emissions from an OG installation by utilizing offshore wind. This project shall provide simulations and experimental testing to identify the bottlenecks, with the goal of reducing the risk for applying floating offshore wind turbines for powering an OG installation. It will be an accelerator for green growth ambitions. Offshore wind for OG offshore installations is new solutions which has potential to raise energy efficiency and effectively reduce CO2/NOx emissions. There are many new challenges for the successful implementation of such new solutions. This project will address some of them.