ABB Integrated Power and Automation Systems Improve Energy Efficiency, Productivity for StatoilHydro


StatoilHydro has realized significant benefits from integrated process and electrical power systems at its complex production facility in the Snøhvit natural gas field, including improved productivity, energy efficiency and grid stability

Zurich, Switzerland, September 2, 2009--Using its flagship Extended Automation System 800xA as the foundation, ABB provides seamlessly integrated power and automation solutions for some of the largest and most highly complex production facilities in the world - a capability that brings substantial benefits to customers during project execution and process operation.

These large-scale integrated electrical and automation solutions span across a broad range of industries from oil and gas installations and petroleum refineries, to pulp and paper mills, cement works, metals and mineral processing facilities, solar energy and power generation plants, and some of the biggest container vessels and cruise ships in the world. ABB's award-winning automation platform, System 800xA, is uniquely equipped for such large-scale plant-wide projects.

In addition to being the leading automation platform for a wide range of process industries, System 800xA has the unique capability to integrate process and power systems on one unified platform. This provides key competitive advantages such as improved energy efficiency, process reliability and productivity as well as reduced maintenance, engineering and overall lifecycle costs.

One of numerous examples is ABB's process-wide solution for the StatoilHydro Snøhvit gas field and Melkøya liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in Norway, both of which went onstream in 2007.

Snøhvit is a highly complex installation in which gas is extracted from three fields 143 kilometers offshore in the Barents Sea, piped to the onshore terminal, processed into LNG, stored in tanks and loaded onto LNG carriers for transportation to consumer markets in Europe and the United States.

The core products of the plant are liquefied natural gas (LNG; 5.67 billion m3/year), liquefied petroleum gas (LPG; up to 250,000 tons/year) and condensate (up to 900,000 m3/year).

ABB's scope of delivery for the gas fields and onshore LNG liquefaction plant and export terminal was extensive and the impact of its integrated solutions on productivity, energy efficiency and grid stability has been immense.

ABB provided the subsea and topside automation systems that control production in the gas fields and monitor the pipelines through which the gas is pumped onshore. A staggering number of signals run through ABB systems at any given time - some 40,000 in the electrical control system and more than 30,000 in the safety and process automation system.

Both systems are integrated for topside control and visualization in the combined safety and automation system for the onshore LNG plant, which is the most critical part of the entire facility.

An equally vast ABB electrical control and supervision system integrates and communicates with the thousands of ABB motors, switches, contactors, circuit breakers and drives as well as third party equipment across the onshore liquefaction plant and LNG terminal.

The ABB Power Management System monitors, controls and protects the entire plant and prevents, among other things, the effects of a relatively minor fault from cascading into a multi-million-dollar shutdown.

ABB (www.abb.com) is a leader in power and automation technologies that enable utility and industry customers to improve performance while lowering environmental impact. The ABB Group of companies operates in around 100 countries and employs about 120,000 people.

Read a detailed account of the ABB solution for Snøhvit from the ABB Review:
http://www04.abb.com/global/seitp/seitp202.nsf/0/0bed29dc564ef393c125754d003ac3e6/$file/hand+in+hand_integrating+electrical+and+automation+systems_ABB+Reveiw+SR+2008.pdf

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