We are rethinking our oil & gas processes as we fit, retrofit, and overhaul legacy data to realize the benefits of cloud technologies and open source community. As such, the work of the OSDU Forum is part of industrial digital transformation.
The energy industry is undergoing decarbonization to reach Net-Zero. Government and private investment in technology improvements and economies of scale have significantly reduced the LCOEs (Levelized Cost of Energy) of Wind and Solar, which are now competitive with fossil fuel power.
Our New Energy projects include wind, solar, hydrogen, and other emerging energy solutions. We are extending the OSDU data models that support oil & gas assets, like wellbores, to also support wind turbines and solar photovoltaics (PVs). By doing this, the OSDU Forum is not just a lever for digitization but also market diversification.
The first of these projects to kick off is to support wind farms. Wind power deployment is growing quickly and at an accelerated speed. There are development and integration synergies in approaching real-time data streams & OPC-Unified Architecture (OPC-UA) in concert with other workstreams like Drilling & Wells Interoperability Standards (D-WIS) and upstream production.
There is additional synergy with the coming Hydrogen workstream, because offshore wind platforms can be collocated with electrolyzers for green hydrogen production.
We need this early start on the challenges of handling wind power data, as it is problematically siloed due to cost and technology challenges, and Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) trade secrets.
We plan to build an operations windfarm service in the OSDU Data Platform to give:
- Visibility to energy production, operations, and equipment health
- Tracking of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for productivity and costs
- Data for forecasting weather events and equipment issues
- Data for planning and optimizing site selection
Multiple wind players contributed to our due diligence. CGI shared their experience, and then Johan Krebbers interviewed Siemens, Schneider Electric, and Emerson for their observations on data standards. Intel, Baker Hughes’ Bently Nevada, Vestas, Equinor and Wipro gave insight and feedback. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) introduced us to parallel efforts of their Open-OA project and the ENTR Alliance.
The major finding of the discovery phase was that the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standards are being widely respected. The IEC 61400 has been designed under the IEC 61850 information model for electrical systems. This standard extends the scope to wind turbine systems and communications.
Eskil Høyen Solvang of Equinor, Vijay Rajendran of Wipro, and Fernando Gravanita of CGI collaborated on consolidated, prioritized data mapping of on-shore and off-shore wind assets and KPIs.
Pierrick Gaudin of TotalEnergies evaluated the IEC standards and designed an extension to the OSDU entity schema to support wind assets. Chris Hough of BP provided support and review. They also assessed the top-down design implications of both Capital Facilities Information Handover Specification (CFIHOS) and IEC/ISO 81346: Rules for Reference Designation Systems (RDS).
An initial POC is supported by our team members: Gary Hickin of EnergyVue is hosting an open ENGIE data set and data visualization. Espen Krogh of Prediktor is supporting OPC-UA connectivity.
Once we have an OSDU time-series data technology in place, we will commence with MVP1 to demonstrate an end-to-end data flow.
We have been actively sharing our vision and approach with the broader wind community. Gary Hickin represented us at the Wind Europe WEDS conference in March 2022, sparking industry collaboration. On September 12-14th, Espen Krogh will present at the E&P Community for Data and Information Management (ECIM) 2022 Conference in Norway: Opening OSDU to Wind-Farms – a first move to the ‘Green Energies.’
David W. Smith, Baker Hughes
Working to leverage digital to lower the cost of energy to battle poverty and climate change. OSDU New Energy – Wind Project Manager. Energistics Board Director. BHC3 Global Council. Baker Hughes Oil Field Services Digital BEACON Remote Operations Services Sr. Solutions Mgr.
