Project : FEED study for Integrated offshore gas & wind power generation

Detailed Description :

Background

Ormonde Energy Limited (OEL) are initiating a project for the development of offshore power generation and export facilities.

Ormonde is a proposed Co-Generation development of wind and gas assets. It is intended to export the power through a grid connection point at Heysham. Power will be generated from 30 offshore wind turbines and an adjacent offshore power generation platform fuelled by gas from sub sea reservoirs. This is a ‘first of its kind’ concept which will enable gas production to compensate for the intermittent nature of wind supply, thus providing the ability to maintain Minimum Guaranteed Output power and the suitability to supply the half hour market peak demands.

Location of the development is some 10km from the coastline in the location of Barrow-in-Furness in 22m of water.

Field Facilities and Criteria

1. Gas Fields –

Supply is from two undeveloped sites - Ormonde North (Block 113/ 28) and Ormonde South (Block 113/ 29).

Gas production converted to electricity via 3 gas turbine generators via 132 kV power provisionally exported to Heysham.

2. Wind Farm

Wind energy will come from 30 wind turbines in an array of 6 daisy chain groups of 5 turbines on mono-piled foundations.

3. Power Export Hub

A single platform forms the collection ‘hub’ for cables from both the Wind Farm and the Gas Generation Platform and the point of departure of the export power cable to shore. The hub will carry the requisite transformer and switchgear equipment for this purpose. The support structure is proposed to be either a monopile or tripod construction

4. Gas Turbine Generator Platform

The GT platform will be a normally unmanned installation (NUI). Two options are being investigated;

• a fixed installation (Jacket and topsides) or
• a jack-up. (A perceived advantage of the jack-up option is that the installation can be relocated to the second field (113/28) when the first field gas reserves are depleted.)

For both options the topsides is to be relocated and reused without modification. However, this will be subject to confirmation of the northern (2nd location) well fluid properties. Accordingly, topside layout will consider provision for space to accommodate any additional process equipment.

Alternative substructure options will be also investigated for the “fixed installation”, which will compare the benefits of suction pile foundations with conventional piled foundations.

5. Control

It is planned that both the wind and gas power generation systems will be operated from a mainland based maintenance centre to be confirmed. The functionality and final location of local/ back-up control required will be determined as part of the FEED.

Scope of Work

The scope of work being undertaken by ode to address all the above items is summaries below –

• FEED of GTG (Gas Turbine Generator) platform
• FEED of power export hub for Wind farm and GTG platform
• Grid connection application for combined Hybrid field
• Consents preparation for Hybrid field
• Environmental impact input
• Field layouts
• Cable sizing / specification
• Cable routing Export/ inter turbine array
• Safety design/ safety case preparation
• RAM (Reliability, Availability and Maintainability) analysis
• HAZOP
• Energy control strategy for hybrid field
• Onshore sub station modification design
• Hook up/ commissioning philosophies
• EPIC phase project schedule
• CAPEX/OPEX assessment
• Field development plan
• Decommissioning study.

Preliminary field layout –