Investigation of Power Loss in the Cable of a Well Submersible Motor

Abstract

More than half of oil-producing wells in Russia are operated using electric submersible pumps, which provide up to 75% of all oil produced in the country. However, electric submersible pumps have a rather high specific energy consumption in production of borehole liquid. Great difficulty is posed by determination of the loss in the cable of a submersible electric motor. I derived the analytical expressions to the adjusted calculation of power loss in the cable of an electric submersible pump. The loss depends on the length and cross section of the cable conductor, the average temperature, and the flowing electric current. The temperature along the wellbore can be approximately described by a linear law. However, other factors should be taken into account: the heating of the cable with flowing electric current and pumped liquid, which, in turn, is heated by the heat of an operating submersible pump unit. I constructed the graphic dependences of cable loss under conditions of current flowing under different values of temperature and length of the cable line. The results of the investigation will help to improve the accuracy of calculating the energy performance of well pumps and optimize their operating modes.