Abstract
Offshore oil platforms operate with independent electrical systems using gas turbines to generate their own electricity. However, gas turbines operate very inefficiently under the variable offshore conditions, increasing fuel costs and air pollutant emissions. This paper focused on investigating the feasibility of implementing a hybrid electricity supply system for offshore oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, both for the United States and Mexico Exclusive Economic Zones. Geographic Information Systems methodologies were used to analyze the data from various sources. Three different scenarios were studied, including wind power only, wave power only, and wind and wave power combined. The results showed that all the offshore locations were within accepted feasible distance to the coast for connecting to the onshore grid. Most of the locations had acceptable power levels of either wind or wave energy while the combination of both resources can improve the overall energy harvesting efficiency and reduce the variability in a significant number of locations. The proposed methodology can be applied for specific locations with finer spatial and time resolution, which will allow stakeholders to improve the decision making process, generate important savings on the normal operation, reduce pollution, and potentially increase income by selling surplus energy from renewable sources.
Highlights
Production and ancillary activities on offshore oil platforms require electric power that ranges from 10 MW up to hundreds of MW, depending on the sizes of oil platforms [1,2]
Gas turbine fuel efficiency is affected under variable operation conditions, considering that the energy consumption during idling conditions can be about 20% of what they would consume at full power [1,3]
Geographical Information Systems (GIS) analysis was performed to ascertain the possibility of connecting offshore oil and gas facilities with the onshore electric grid, ascertain the possibility of connecting offshore oil and gas facilities with the onshore electric grid, and and to analyze the available wind and wave energy resources in each particular area considering to analyze the available wind and wave energy resources in each particular area considering historical historical data provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Summary
Production and ancillary activities on offshore oil platforms require electric power that ranges from 10 MW up to hundreds of MW, depending on the sizes of oil platforms [1,2]. Most of these platforms function with independent electrical systems, generating energy using gas turbines, which are expensive to operate [1]. Gas turbines in offshore oil platforms normally operate under 30% efficiency ranges, when the normal average efficiency should be about 55% considering a combined cycle gas power plant [3,4,5,6,7,8].
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