Efficiency increase and emissions reduction in offshore O&G platforms by wind integration, storage deployment and cooperative control

The oil and gas (O&G) sector is still expected to contribute up to 46% to the global primary energy use in 2050, and the Norwegian economy relies strongly on such industry, as O&G constitutes 50% of the value of national exported goods. However, it also represents an environmental concern, as corresponding emissions sum up to one fourth of Norway's total greenhouse gas emissions. It is therefore a priority to mitigate the environmental impact of the O&G sector. This requires working concurrently on two different but interrelated aspects, i.e.: 1) increasing the sustainability of power generation, by relying on offshore wind energy and reducing the use of polluting gas turbines. Such attractive solution demands accurate analyses to ensure that the intermittency of the resource does not compromise the stability of the electric grid and jeopardize the security of supply to critical loads; 2) reducing and rationalizing the power consumption by decreasing losses and boosting system efficiency. This implies to identify, analyze and mitigate local power quality problems that have a direct impact on energy conservation, employees' safety and continuous operation on the platform. This can be achieved with appropriate measures, such as load scheduling and coordination of compensating equipment. The crucial and still underexplored asset to ensure the viability and optimization of the two strategies above is to deploy energy storage systems on the platforms. Under Smart Platform, NTNU leads an international consortium where Equinor, ABB, SAFT, Sao Paulo State University and Federal University of Minas Gerais join forces towards the goal of carbon neutrality by 2050. For this, industrial and academic partners will investigate how battery energy storage systems and their cooperative control can increase energy efficiency, reduce produced greenhouse gases and ease wind integration in present and future oil and gas platforms. In the first stage of the project, all the partners agreed on the test case(s) of common interest to be used as main reference for the scientific activities, after discussing several alternatives. Besides, very preliminary analysis and simulation tools for power quality analysis on oil and gas platforms have been produced, which will be a starting point in later phases of the projects. In parallel, a review/assessment of energy storage technologies suitable for offshore applications is ongoing.

Smart Platform will investigate how energy storage and cooperative control strategies can affect energy efficiency and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in a typical offshore oil and gas (O&G) platform and identify technical solutions required to mitigate the impact of offshore wind integration into the platform's electric network. The need to reduce GHG emissions and increase energy efficiency in the O&G sector is a system-level problem arising from the independent design and subsequent interconnection of many subsystems. Smart Platform will tackle this problem by: a) reducing and rationalizing the power utilization, i.e. acting on the consumption side; and b) introducing renewable and cleaner energy sources e.g. acting on the power generation. The massive presence of processing equipment such as pumps, compressors and drilling rigs determines a degraded power quality (PQ) in the electrical grid of offshore installations. Smart Platform aims at analyzing, understanding and mitigating PQ problems in the specific O&G scenario, as this has a direct impact on energy conservation (i.e. saving energy by eliminating unnecessary activities or losses), energy efficiency, employees' safety (lighting issues, risk of fire) and continuous operation of the plant (avoid unexpected shutdowns or excessive maintenance). Load management, cooperative control of power converters and energy storage coordination will be investigated to mitigate PQ problems. b) Moreover, as on-board gas turbines have low efficiency and are responsible for 85% of the total O&G GHG emissions, Smart Platform will investigate how to minimize their use by supplying part of the required power by offshore wind turbines, energy storage devices or a combination of both. The project, led by NTNU, will work on realistic test-cases, based on a close synergy between the Norwegian partners (Equinor, ABB, and SAFT) and two leading Brazilian Universities (Sao Paulo State University and Federal University of Minas Gerais).