Abstract
Abstract This paper describes the recent real-world demonstration of a gas-fueled power generation system for drill rigs which utilizes automation, energy storage, and integrated electronic controls to achieve excellent performance and efficiency. Land drilling rigs are typically powered by a set of diesel-fueled generator sets, but natural gas has been an attractive alternative fuel due to lower fuel cost and lower emissions. Lean-burn natural gas generator sets have traditionally not had the transient response required to accept the large load changes imposed by the drawworks motors on a drill rig while maintaining a steady bus frequency, unless combined with energy storage or resistive load banks, while rich-burn generator sets for drilling have been large and inefficient. In this demonstration, a set of high-performance lean-burn natural gas generator sets with superb transient response were combined with an energy storage system to mitigate the effects of transient load demand and showed excellent performance in real-world drilling situations over a period of more than 6 months. Furthermore, an automated supervisory control system was implemented which automated the starting and stopping of generator sets to achieve efficient operation and simultaneously provide a long life of the batteries in the energy storage system. Fuel savings have been calculated based on observed performance of the subject rig compared to simulated performance with a diesel power generation system under the same conditions, and by comparison of the subject rig to neighboring rigs. The integrated automatic control system reduced fuel usage by 13% and engine operating hours by 30% compared to running the same natural gas generator sets and energy storage without automation nor frequent manual interventions. Fuel savings compared to a conventional diesel-powered drill rig were estimated to be 612,500 gallons of diesel per year based on the observed operating loads.
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