Developing and Testing a Control Strategy on Electromechanical Test Bench for Operating a Group of Sucker Rod Pumps for Smoothing the Power Demand Requirement

The article concerns on developing a control strategy for smoothing the power demand of a group of sucker rod pumping unit (SRPU) and test bench for emulating its static and dynamic processes. The nature of the load driven by this type of drives is highly variable and periodic. An electromechanical test bench is developed to emulate the sucker rod pump dynamics and using this platform various tests can be carried out. Moreover, this platform can be used to conduct studies related to smoothing the power demand of a group of SRPU. In this paper, a control strategy is developed in LABVIEW for controlling the pumping speed and phase of a drive, such that a group of SRPUs demand a smoother power as seen from the upstream of the coupling point. To test the control strategy, torque curve, speed curve, and power curve for a reference drive are generated. The controller adjusts the pumping speed and phase of the emulated SRPU relative to the reference drive. The experimental results confirm that the test bench can serve for testing various control systems.