Online Optimal Power Control of an Offshore Oil-Platform Power System

Offshore oil-platform power systems are important infrastructure for the exploitation of maritime oil and gas. However, its current energy management system, with relatively simple control scheme and low-level automation, can hardly operate the system in a secure and economic manner to match the rapid progress of offshore oil and gas exploitation. To address this issue, an online multi-objective optimal power control strategy is proposed and implemented based on the existing SCADA system. By incorporating network loss, gas consumption and voltage deviation into a synthesized objective function and taking the various operational constraints into account, the power-control task is formulated into a mixed-integer nonlinear optimized problem. And then an efficient procedure that combines the interior point method and the fast branch and bound method is developed to solve the problem. Consequently the optimal control strategy can be obtained online and either system security or operational efficiency is achieved. The developed control system has been put into practical use in the Weixinan offshore oil-platform power system (China’s first of its kind). Field test results show that it can coordinate active and reactive power for online optimal control as per the changes of operating conditions. The improved safety, efficiency and power quality of the power system will definitely promote exploitation of offshore oil and gas in the respect of both security and efficiency.