Case study: Integrating the power management system of an existing oil production field

The power management system at a brownfield oil production facility must minimize production interruption while ensuring power system reliability, stability, and scalability. This paper describes the implementation of a power management system for a mature oil field. The new system optimizes the use of sources that allow the facility to separate from the utility during system events and reconnect back to the utility when the power system is stable. To counteract an unbalance between the power supply and demand, the system includes three independent, redundant load-shedding schemes. Additionally, an added generation control system allows control of frequency, voltage, power, and power factor through the utility tie line. The system includes automatic synchronization schemes and islanding controls that allow the generators to operate in the optimized mode. To validate the system, the load-shedding and generation control functionalities were tested using a real-time, closed-loop environment. Additionally, the paper describes the networking and its redundancy strategies for the system and the integration of the supervisory control and data acquisition and human-machine interface system in the facility. The implemented system manages and operates the power management system and offers synchrophasor data collection that allows archiving and analysis of higher-resolution data.