Woodside gas platform installs first battery micro-grid – to burn less gas

woodside gas

Australian oil and gas giant Woodside is installing a first-of-its-kind battery storage micro-grid on its massive Goodwyn A platform in the north-west shelf – so that the operations can burn less gas.

The 22-year-old Goodwyn platform is to install 1MWh battery “microgrid” solution offered by ABB that will enable it to switch off half of the small gas generators it uses as “spinning reserve”, decommission one unit, as well as reduce its need for a back-up diesel generator.

ABB says its containerised, plug-and-play PowerStore Battery storage system will fully replace one of the six existing 3.2MW gas turbine generators, and will mean half of them can be switched off rather than acting as spinning reserve. It also provides short term back-up in case of an outage.

It will mean the remaining generators can operate at a lower cost and higher efficiency, and maintenance costs will be reduced.

The Goodwyn A offshore production platform is located about 135 km northwest of Karratha in Western Australia, stands in a water depth of 131 meters and is more than 290 metres tall. It produces 36,000 tonnes of gas daily.

ABB says it has 40 such global installations in remote communities, islands, utilities and industrial campuses, including 15 in Australia, but this is the first for an offshore drilling platform,

“We are pleased to partner with Woodside on pioneering a PowerStore Battery energy solution for offshore oil and gas, which will decrease the users environmental impact and help optimize costs” said Massimo Danieli, head of ABB’s Grid Automation business in a statement.

“Microgrids and energy storage are key focus areas of our Next Level strategy and this innovative solution reinforces ABB’s position as a partner of choice in enabling a stronger, smarter and greener grid.”

 

 

 

 

Comments

4 responses to “Woodside gas platform installs first battery micro-grid – to burn less gas”

  1. Joe Avatar
    Joe

    Why burn gas in the first place. We have it all the RE sources available here in Australia with solar, wind, water – hydro & tidal, geothermal, bio gas…just harness it.

    1. Tom Avatar
      Tom

      It’s a gas well with no room for solar or wind.

  2. Tim Forcey Avatar
    Tim Forcey

    Generally it is to the offshore oil producer’s advantage to burn/destroy as much gas as possible as quickly as possible… offshore. This allows the accelerated production of the more valuable / wanted liquid products: oil and LPG. Gas can be seen as a nuisance byproduct of the whole operation.

    So this expenditure seems strange, for an offshore oil producer.

    Perhaps some regulation requires some positive environmental action to be taken, dunno…

  3. onesecond Avatar
    onesecond

    An electric cargo ship to haul coal… a glass roof to catch solar heat to help extract heavy crude oil… and now a gas platform with batteries replacing gas turbines…
    Surely it is all hippies in these industries, because the Coalition is telling us all the time how useless and unreliable these solutions are… So obviously only a lot of tree huggers with no sense for the bottom line running rampant there.

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