A simulation model for electrification of offshore oil and gas platforms with wind energy

Approximately 25% of Norway's CO2 emissions come from the oil and gas installations in the North Sea. One possibility of reducing these emissions is electrification of the installations from land. However, this can be challenging and costly, especially for the installations far from shore. An alternative solution is to electrify with offshore wind energy. The North Sea has good wind resources that can be exploited for this purpose. Electrification with wind energy also provides an opportunity to transition to renewable energy production for future energy needs, while at the same time reducing the climate impact of the ongoing oil and gas production.

A main challenge with wind energy is the variability of the wind resources. The power demand of the oil and gas installations is also variable and unpredictable to some degree. In the ELOGOW project we have developed an energy simulation model that shows that this imbalance between available power and demand can be alleviated by adding energy buffers. If the energy buffer capacity is large enough to last during the start-up of gas turbines, it will be possible to completely shut off the gas turbines over long periods of time when the wind energy is sufficient, and only start them on demand.

The presentation will go through the simulation model and some main results.

Yngve Heggelund

is a senior researcher at NORCE in the division of Energy and Technology. His research spans areas multiple areas including offshore wind energy, marine acoustics, and optical sensing technology where his main interest is data analysis, data processing, modelling and simulation. He holds a PhD in applied mathematics from the University of Bergen.