Technical Qualification of the next generation subsea control and auxiliary system - Joint Industry Project

The journey towards the realization of the subsea factory is well on its way, promising the benefits of subsea processing and production. The "Grand Challenge" of placing the power infrastructure on the seabed offers significant economic and technical advantages but also places extreme demands on the reliability, uptime and safety of the technology. Helping to solve these issues is the focus of this project. The basic concept and the development of components is largely complete and the current focus is on qualifying and extensively testing the various units: the drive, the switchgear and the control & protection system. This is important as it certifies and validates that the units meet the design requirements, pass the performance and quality assurance tests. Each component needs to be pressure resistant and thermally efficient, being able to operate comfortably in the very harsh environment. It must also be ultra-reliable: they need to operate for 30 years with minimal intervention. It may be compared with sending a satellite into space; once it's up there it is very hard to access. The same is true when placing equipment on the seabed. There are no service engineers at 3,000m underwater. These high-power units are at the forefront of technology and ABB are making a lot of ground-breaking innovative designs to meet the reliability targets. ABB have already seen promising early results and the first prototype units have been built and tested. Prototypes under development include full-scale subsea drive and switchgear with supporting controls and LV auxiliaries. These are being put through their paces as part of the formal qualification tests. Technological progress comparable to that of the space program is being made and while there are still many tests left to run, the future of the subsea factory is closer than it's ever been and the work in this project is certain to have a profound implication for the future of the technology and the industry.

The subsea electronic control modules (SEM) necessary for the subsea power solution have been designed, produced and qualified according to the relevant subsea standards. Subsea control modules (SCM) have been designed and qualified. The SCM is oil-filled pressure compensated containers for the SEMs which are 1-atmosphere Nitrogen filled containers. Software for subsea auxiliary control power control and electrical protection functionality including redundancy and condition monitoring has been implemented and validated. Solutions and software for performing factory acceptance tests for the various SEMs, SCMs, and integrated system have been made.