Patent ID: 7953575

Claim:
A method of sensing a direction of rotation of an electrical submersible pump comprising: a. monitoring the pump with a vibration sensor as the pump rotates; b. generating output signals with the vibration sensor that represent acceleration along a directional axis and acceleration along another directional axis to estimate acceleration of the pump along directional axes that are in a plane substantially normal to an axis of the pump; and c. determining rotational direction of the pump by time shifting the output signals to estimate when the pump accelerates in the respective directional axes by determining a frequency of the rotation of the electrical submersible pump to thereby identify a period of the rotation, correlating signals form the directional axes where one of the correlated signals is shifted by minus one-fourth of the identified period of the rotation, where one of the correlated signals is shifted by plus one-fourth of the identified period of the rotation, and where the one of the correlated signals is not shifted, and comparing the correlations of the signals representing acceleration from the directional axes to determine which signal representing acceleration from the one of the directional axis leads or lags the signal representing acceleration from the another directional axis.