Proceedings of the Thirty-second (2022) International Ocean and Polar Engineering Conference
Shanghai, China, June 5–10, 2022
Copyright © 2022 by the International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers (ISOPE)
ISBN 978-1-880653-81-4; ISSN 1098-6189

www.isope.org

General Discussion on Offshore Wind Farm Supplying Power to Offshore Oil and Gas Platforms
Zhichuan Li1, Zhaoheng Sun1, Zihang Li1, Xiaoyan Liu1

1. CNOOC Energy Technology & Services Limited, Clean Energy Branch
Tianjin, China

ABSTRACT

negative effects like vision pollution and noise. By utilizing wind farms
to supply power for offshore oil and gas platforms, a large amount offossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions like carbon
dioxide can be reduced. However, the randomness of wind energy willcause power output fluctuations, affecting the stability of the powersystem and endangering the safe operation of the system in severe cases.
Thus, research on the power supply method of offshore wind powershould be conducted, and measures should be taken to deal with thefluctuations in wind power.

Due to high emission and high costs in the self-generation system ofoffshore oil and gas platforms, the technology of offshore wind farms
supplying power to offshore oil and gas platforms have been studied. In
this paper schemes are proposed: complementary power supply
between offshore wind farms and gas turbine or crude oil power station,complementary power supply between offshore wind farms and power
grid, and complementary power supply between offshore wind farms
and energy storage. Analysis for the three schemes has been performed
from the aspects of power quality, load balance, energy conservationand emission reduction. The analyse show that in terms of thecharacteristics of offshore wind farms and offshore oil and gas
platforms of different capacities, the first scheme is more suitable to bea preliminary demonstration project; the second scheme can be adopted
for newly-built offshore oil and gas platforms based on thedemonstration of the first scheme; the third scheme can be used forunmanned platforms or marginal oil fields where a power supply line
needs to be laid separately. Through the research on this technology,
the electricity consumption problem of offshore wind farms can besolved, the carbon emission and power generation cost of oil and gas
platforms are reduced simultaneously. This research can provide strong
technical support for the coordinated development of offshore wind
power and oil and gas industry in the future.

Connecting offshore wind power to the self-generation system of oil
and gas platforms is a feasible solution, which drew some researchers’
attention. Based on one-year wind data, Adrdal et al.(Aardal, 2012)
conducted a simulation study on a wind farm, with an installed capacityof 100MW, to power five interconnected oil and gas platforms. The
electricity demand of the platform is assumed to be constant at 147MW,
and two gas turbines are still working parallel with the wind farm,giving the top priority to dealing with remaining power. One-year
simulation results demonstrate that the wind farm can help to reduce
fuel consumption by about 21%-32%. In addition, Korpa et al. (Korpas,2012) carried out similar research, with four 5MW wind turbines
adopted in parallel with two 23MW gas turbines to power the platform.
During the research, start/stop strategies are optimized to make gas
turbines operate efficiently. Results show that every year the offshore
wind farm can save 2400 m3 of natural gas and reduce 53.8 thousand
tons of carbon dioxide emission. The optimized start/stop strategy has
promoted the average operation efficiency of the gas turbine from
25.6% to 30.1%.

KEY WORDS: Offshore wind farm; offshore oil and gas platform;
onshore power; energy storage

INTRODUCTION

Offshore wind farms powering the platform have positive impacts onenergy conservation and emission reduction in the process of oil andgas production. Moreover, the effects on the stability of the powersystem are also essential. Hu et al.(Hu, 2008) have studied the stabilityof the isolated offshore oil and gas platform power system connected towind power. The simulation results indicated that the frequency andvoltage could stay stable when the wind power is connected to the gas
turbine. During this period, a grid-connected experiment between
offshore oil and gas platforms and offshore wind power promoted by
CNOOC has shown that the impact of offshore wind power on power
and frequency stability is acceptable. To deal with the unstable powersystem and generator failure, Marvik et al. (Marvik, 2013) conducted asimulation on combining offshore wind power with onshore power,

With the development of global industry, the greenhouse effect has
intensified, and the global average temperature has risen by about 1.2
degrees Celsius compared with before (World MeteorologicalOrganization, 2021). The energy industry has the greatest impact ongreenhouse gas emissions. In the oil and gas industry, a large numberof fossil fuels were consumed in resource exploration, refineries, power
generation, and primary energy transportation, which is the leading way
of carbon dioxide emissions. With global carbon neutrality pushing
forward, the green energy industry is developing rapidly, and offshore
wind power projects have begun to be researched and implemented
globally. There are advantages of offshore wind power such as highwind speeds, tremendous wind resources to be exploited, and no293