Power Testing of Offshore Generating Systems

Abstract

Introduction The commissioning of an electrical installation off-shore on a drilling/ production platform presents very different problems to those experienced with equivalent equipment on-shore. Many factors combine to cause this and among the most important are the restricted number of personnel which can be accommodated, the significance of time delay on a project with such high capital investment, the great importance placed on the maximum safety, security, and reliability throughout the complete operation, the concentration and complexity of the many control, monitoring, safety and alarm systems in combination with the many systems of power generation provided, and not least the adverse environmental conditions suffered by the equipment during erection, storage and transportation in modules, and final erection on the platform with considerable exposure to shock, vibration and severe climatic conditions. To reduce these off-shore problems and ensure minimum off-shore time required to put the electrical system to work it was decided to carry out full-scale on-shore testing programmes on the electrical generation equipment for the first two BP Forties platforms. These involved considerable logistical problems as well as those involved in the purely technical operations but the results obtained from both sets of tests have fully justified the operation. Testing Programme The electrical generation equipment and its layout on the platform has been fully described elsewhere, refs. 1, 2 and 3. Packages 1 and VII contain the main gasturbine generator sets, their control and starting equipment, the 11 kV switchgear, power transformers, 3.3 kV switchgear convert or equipment, diesel-generator ' set,415V switchgear and motor control centres, and items such as switchgear batteries, neutral earthing resistors and items necessary to provide a complete generation system. By placing these two packages close to each other, in the case of the Rotterdam unit on the same barge, interconnection was relatively simple. Although all the separate items of equipment were fully inspected and tested at their place of manufacture many of the control and operation sequences are unique and had not been used previously on such a concentrated and self-contained system. In addition the procedures of packing, transportation, prolonged storage, sometimes under adverse environmental conditions, erection in modules still under fabrication, and intercabling, all combine to introduce a high probability that considerable rechecking would be essential to detect any damage or deficiencies. It was also considered desirable to fully test and prove the coordinated functioning of interconnected systems of power generation, control, protection and instrumentation whose components had never been operated conjointly although this would require considerable expenditure on test equipment and manpower. The testing programme enabled the following aspects to be proved to a very high degree ofcompletion.

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Identifiers

DOI

10.4043/2256-ms

Journal

Offshore Technology Conference

Year

1975