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better.”

All-electric systems are well suited to lo- cal energy generation and storage which can be an additional enabler to project viability. Also, electri? cation leads to reduction of surface infrastructure at the host facility, coupled with the reduction of hydraulics eliminating hydraulic pow- er units and large topside reservoir.

In the future the integration with au- tonomous underwater vehicles, subsea wireless and subsea power solutions will support even more reduction of in- frastructure topside. “Electri? cation at a system level will drive simpli? cation of integration with

Credit: Siemens Energy existing infrastructure, moving more to a plug-and-play model for infrastruc- ture led (ILX) resources, for example,” says Macleod.

This is especially important for tiebacks into busy facilities, where plug-and-

Mechanical solution for stab-plate based control canister with six play power and communications result electrical stab-plate connectors in the bottom and two electrical and one in much simpler topside modi? cations, ? bre optic ROV connectors in the top. This mechanical solution can be much lower cost and much smaller envi- used for all standard assemblies in the Subsea DigiGRID portfolio.

ronmental footprint rebuilding topsides.

The elimination of high-pressure hy- draulic systems is expected to enable operators to go further and deeper, im- proving production and making even marginal ? elds more viable.

“Electri? cation is in some cases the only solution to achieve technical, com- mercial and operationally viable solu- tions for long distance developments.

Using traditional systems, it will be much harder and costly to achieve both acceptable safety and operational perfor- mance compared with hydraulic systems during, for instance, shutdown and pres- surization of the system. Digitalization of subsea assets facilitates more opportuni- ties for conditioning monitoring, which allows for predictive maintenance and planned interventions or the potential to avoid equipment failure altogether.”

One of the key changes SLB has made is to go from a spring-operated on/off system to a battery-operated and motor controlled one, facilitating much better positional control. “Ultimately, more control and more data enables realization of optimiza- tion that in time may lead toward more www.marinetechnologynews.com 23

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