Integrated Power & Automation Systems: Future Trends For Pipeline System Efficiency

Leaders in the oil and gas industry have continually expressed the need for increased operational efficiency, reduced downtime, reduced energy consumption, and decreased environmental emissions.

To meet these industry needs, a true integration platform is necessary in order to tie together the electrical control system, process control system, and maintenance equipment health information so that managers and operators can make informed decisions on energy and lifecycle management which will increase oil/gas flow uptime.

This article discusses a new system integration architecture and power strategy that addresses each of these issues facing the oil and gas pipeline industry today, as well as future system architecture trends being designed to help alleviate these problems.

Barriers To Meeting Top Needs
Along pipelines and distribution networks, there are major hurdles to efficient operation, including lack of electricity, limited bandwidth for data transfer, and the high cost of network bandwidth. At the product-gathering points, there are organizational barriers among disciplines within the facilities and their suppliers. Typically, there is a lack of communication standards and system architecture designs at all levels within the industry, resulting in higher project execution, commissioning, and lifecycle costs.

Solution: Variable Speed Drives and Electrical Integration

Variable Speed Drives For Energy Efficiency
There are three categories of pipelines: Product-gathering points, transportation pipelines, and distribution networks. Gathering points come together at a terminal station where the product is brought to a common point to be processed, then transported.

It is an energy-intensive process to move oil or gas through a pipeline. Gas needs to be kept at a specific pressure to maintain flow. Compressors are typically used to maintain pressure and over long pipelines, such compressors can be very large and require lots of energy. Often they are driven by gas-powered turbines. Gas turbines, however, are inefficient (only 30% efficiency), environmentally unfriendly, and noisy. They require a great deal of maintenance, resulting in pipeline downtime.

In many situations along oil pipelines, the pumping stations are run inefficiently by operating at full power with flow maintained by control valves. ABB’s solution is Variable Speed Drives (VSDs). VSDs are more energy efficient and require less maintenance than gas turbines, thereby offering more pipeline uptime. VSDs reduce emissions by 50 percent.(1) Moreover, VSDs are typically less expensive than gas turbines. Current trends show pipeline operators replacing their legacy gas turbine systems with VSDs.