ABB partners with Equinor on digital integration to optimize offshore assets
The Gina Krog platform
ABB has begun a pilot project with Equinor in Norway, at the Gina Krog platform in the North Sea, to enable the digital transformation of monitoring of critical electrical systems on the platform, accelerating Equinor’s condition-monitoring capabilities with a focus on improving safety, reducing operational costs, and increasing production efficiency.
Adopting a collaborative-maintenance model enables Equinor to start the journey from today’s planned-maintenance program toward prescriptive maintenance. Data will be transferred from the platform’s power management system and electrical condition monitoring system to Equinor’s OMNIA Microsoft Azure cloud platform, using an onsite ABB EdgeInsight data pump. From here live data will be securely streamed to ABB’s own Microsoft Azure cloud where a dedicated team will utilize the data to continuously improve condition monitoring technology and tools to be used by ABB’s Reliability Service team. By streaming data directly to ABB, Equinor is securely transporting high-level information from assets that will deliver transparency on performance, better predictability, and process optimization, the partners note.
Erik Holsten, head of energy industries for Northern Europe at ABB said, “By collaborating with Equinor in this way, we will make sure that they have real time electrical equipment health visibility. In addition, we are contributing to meeting reliability performance targets and reducing the cost of interruptions.”
As the pilot progresses, ABB plans to take over day-to-day condition monitoring operations for the critical electrical equipment, to be managed offsite by ABB’s Reliability Service team. This will be done in close co-operation with Gina Krog personnel and Equinor’s Integrated Operations Center (IOC). ABB engineers will work inside Equinor’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, helping with generation of notifications.
“Through this project and collaboration we can utilize operations data in a much leaner and faster way," said Equinor Vice President Operations Bernt E. Tysseland. "By allowing ABB’s experts to work digitally alongside Equinor personnel we can improve safety and reduce maintenance administration hours."
Once onboarded, ABB and Equinor will jointly investigate the opportunity to apply the same approach for other relevant equipment. Added Holsten, “The COVID-19 pandemic, alongside the global drive towards more sustainable operations, has highlighted the importance of building resilience and enabling adaptability within operational models. Increasingly our customers are looking for the benefits that leaner, more autonomous onsite operations, supported by teams remotely, offsite can deliver.”
