Wind power minimises decommissioning maintenance costs

The Oil Field is a small 3-platform oil field situated off the northeast coast of Scotland. It has been operating since 1980 but was decommissioned in 2017 to be replaced by an 84 turbine wind farm.

As it will take several years to remove all the oil field structures, the IOC need reliable power for this life support phase of the platform until the decommissioning is complete.
Typically, generators installed for this would require batteries to be changed regularly which would incur extra costs as the platforms are unmanned.

The customer asked Aggreko to come up with a solution that would minimise maintenance visits and make the power solution as cost-efficient as possible.

Having assessed the power requirements of the platform during the decommissioning phase we supplied 1 x 125 kVA and 1 x 200 kVA to the site.

To get around the issue of regular battery replacements, our experts designed, engineered, and installed a novel addition to the generators - a mini wind turbine was connected to each to give a slow trickle of charge to the batteries and keep them running for much longer than usual.

The generators have been working as expected with no issues for over 18 months since the installation.

The mini wind turbines have given the IOC significant savings on their maintenance costs as they have meant much fewer trips have been needed to the unmanned platform and they have had total confidence in the reliability of the equipment.