Coordinated Control of Adjustable Speed Drives Applied to Oil and Gas Production Platforms

Oil and gas (O&G) industry is currently seeking alternative and advanced technologies to enhance energy efficiency and system reliability, to increase production and to reduce carbon emissions and losses in production platforms. In such context, this paper proposes the use of multitask Adjustable Speed Drives (ASDs) to control high-power motors, by means of a proper coordinated control, aiming at reactive, unbalance and harmonic distortion minimization. The study was based on the power system of a typical FPSO (Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading) platform, which was modeled in Matlab/Simulink using data from real industrial equipment. The methodology was validated by means of simulation results, considering a variety of motor start-up scenarios and focusing on the FPSO voltage regulation, with and without the proposed strategy.