Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Engineering, Vol. 36, No. 7, pp.

942～947, 2012(ISSN 1226-9549)

[Link]

Electric Power System Design and Analysis for Drilling Rigs

1 2 3 4
Chul-ho Kim ․Yoon-sik Kim†․Hyun-woo Jung ․Seung-nam Ryu ․Kyoung-kuk Yoon
(Received October 16, 2012; Revised October 25, 2012; Accepted October 30, 2012)

Abstract：As electricity has been used in ship's propulsion, it is necessary to increase the system voltage
and current for the electrical distribution system. So it is required to improve the system safety and
efficiency, the power stability, the efficiency of the generation through various analysis of ship's electric
power system. In this paper, the electrical service reliability of the power distribution system of semi
submersible drilling rigs has been analysed and discussed using ETAP.
Key words ：Electric propulsion ship, ETAP (Electrical Transient Analyzer Program), Drilling rig

1. Introduction The electrical distribution system of Drilling Rigs

The interest of the off-shore plants in the is quite similar to typical redundancy system of
deepwater drilling has been rising up because of electric propulsion ships made for transportation.
the increase of oil price and the exhaustion of However it is required the electrical distribution
offshore oil and gas throughout the world. Now system of 2 to 4 split bus or more because of the
that it costs much more than hundreds of billion severe marine environment, the hazards of fire and
dollars, even trillions of dollars, to design and build explosion, 24-hours operation, the standards and
one, these types of huge marine facilities require regulations related to oil and gas drilling. In this
high-quality reliability, durability and safety with paper, to verify the stability of designed power
technology-intensive basis. system, the power system of SSDRs is modeled at
In the case of Semi Submersible Drill Rigs first and load flow is analysed on each operational
(SSDR) that are being used in most of the mode. On the basis of the analysis the voltage
deepwater drilling operations, Korean major variation in the distribution feeder is discussed.
shipyards have excellent construction technology to
occupy more than 60% of the whole shipbuilding 2. The Structure of SSDRs
orders received. SSDRs can move by thrusters with The basic structure of SSDRs is mostly divided
Dynamic Positioning System (DP), and has into three parts. It can control the movement and
equipped a drilling packages like pumps, pipes and positioning of the plant using 4-8 thrusters located
drills. It also has living quarter for crew on board. at the both ends of pontoons under water. And

†Corresponding author (Division of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Korea Maritime University,
E-mail: benkys@[Link], Tel: 051-410-4411)
1 Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Korea Maritime University, E-mail: kimchulho_@[Link],
Tel: 051-410-4892
2 Korea Maritime University, E-mail: [Link]@[Link], Tel: 010-7152-1925
3 Korea Maritime University, E-mail: krs586@[Link], Tel: 010-6356-7139
4 Korea Maritime University, E-mail: navy2@[Link], Tel: 010-5541-0424

942 / Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Engineering, Vol. 36, No. 7, 2012. 11
 Electric Power System Design and Analysis for Drilling Rigs 75

drilling packages in the middle of the upper deck

has digging and drilling outfits. It also has a living
quarter for workers.
Contrary to industrial power system on land,
off-shore plant's electric power system has
different aspects of electrically stand-alone system,
frequent starting and stopping of large consumers
such as thrusters and drilling rig, voltage sensitivity
due to the faults, harmonic distortion derived from
the rectifier, inverter and variable speed drive. Figure 2: 12-pulse Variable Frequency Drive

2.1 Modeling of Electrical Power system

The modeling of electrical power system is based
on operation mode(Table 1) and load profile(Table
2).

Table 1: Operation mode

Back
Type Transit Drilling Drilling Reaming
+ 1/2 DP + 1/2 DP + 3/4 DP
+ 3/4 DP
Total 19790 27636 35780 34806
Load

Generator 34668 34668 46224 46224

Figure 1: Typical electrical power system for semi No. of 6 6 8 8

Gen.
submersibles
% Load 57 80 77 75
The distance is shorter between the power and
* DP : Dynamic Positioning, unit : kVA
the load in the off-shore plant and it is a
concentrated load that flows a large current in a
The generator capacity is calculated by
short time. The systematic capacitance caused by
considering the expecting maximum load of
the cross section of the thicker power cable is
operation mode, design life of the off-shore plant
growing bigger. So it should be considered
and future load.
switching voltages and insulation break of the
electric system.
Table 2: Load profile(unit : KVA)
The electrical power distribution system in
SSDRs (Figure 1) is generally composed of a Transit Drilling Drilling Back
Type + 1/2 + 1/2 + 3/4 Reaming
4-split high voltage buses and has 2 thrusters per DP DP DP + 3/4DP
one HV bus. An entire system’s fail can be Service
6222 8818 8818 9044
Load
prevented by distributed generators and thrusters on
Drilling
4-split buses in an accident. 0 5250 5250 4050
Load
Thruster 13568 13568 21712 21712

Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Engineering, Vol. 36, No. 7, 2012. 11 / 943
76 Chul-ho Kim․Yoon-sik Kim․Hyun-woo Jung․Seung-nam Ryu․Kyoung-kuk Yoon

Figure 3: Load flow analysis result of minimum load

The load profile is shown in Table 2 and the diagram The generator has 5778 kVA generating capacity
of electrical power system in Figure 3. The load and the load flow moves from the generator to
composition ratio based on its maximum value is 25.1% load nomally. In addition, the voltage drop of
of service load, 60.3% of propulsion load, 14.6% of service feeder is allowable within 97.7% of rated
drilling load respectively. As a result it has 22% margin voltage 690V. The analysis result of load flow in
in generating capacity with the total load of 78%. minimum load running is shown in Figure 3.

3. Load Flow Analysis 3.2 Maximum load flow analysis

3.1 Minimum load flow analysis The maximum load occurs when the drilling
In transition mode, a generator has a 57% packages and DP thruster load should be operated
loading of its rated kVA which is composed of at the sametime.
minimum propulsion load and service load. Operating in maximum load, 4449.1 kVA is
loaded and it makes all 8 generators running. There
Table 3: The result of minimum load flow analysis is still 23% extra margin in the generating capacity,
which can be used in the worst situation. Table 4
Type Result Remarks shows the load and generator margin and voltage
Load 3294.5 kVA 57% drop of feeders.
Drilling TR provides an redundancy and one
Generator 5778 kVA 43% margin
transformer will take all the drilling loads in
Voltage drop 674 Vac 97.7% emergency.

944 / Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Engineering, Vol. 36, No. 7, 2012. 11
 Electric Power System Design and Analysis for Drilling Rigs 77

Figure 4: Load flow analysis result of maximum load

Table 4: The result of maximum load flow analysis maximum load condition in electric power system,
Type Result Remarks consequently, the designed electrical power system

Load 4449.1 kVA 77%

is acceptable. Table 5 shows the load and margin
in percent by the electrical equipment
Generator 5778 kVA 23% margin
And the specification of equipment is shown in
Voltage drop 669.9 Vac 97.1%
Table 6. It can be operated with the higher
efficiency and will be operating at high power
Table 5: Electrical Equipment's load profile factor due to the 12-pulse rectifiers, VFDs
Type Load(%) Margin(%) (Variable Frequency Drive) and 3-winding phase
Service TR 55.7 ~ 76.4 25.6 shift transformers to drive a propulsion motor.
Drill TR 46.6 ~ 44.5 53.4
Propulsion TR 81.1 18.9 Table 6: Electrical Equipment's specifications
Generator 77 23
Type Specification
Generator 5778kVA 11kV P.F=0.9 8poles 900rpm
The feeder voltage drop of low voltage service VFD 4600kVA 690VAC
load is 97.1% within the permissible limit. Charger AC 690V/DC690V 1900kWDC In= 2754A
The running load of the propulsion transformer 1. Propulsion TR
3800/1600/1600kVA %Z=8
is 81.1%, which has about 19% margin to the full Transformer 11/0.69/0.69kV
load and the service TR also has an appropriate 2. Service TR
11/0.69kV 3300kVA
load margin of 25.6%. It has enough margin and is Propulsion 3200kW 690V 10poles 720rpm
allowable level of voltage drop under the Motor Efficiency = 94.3%

Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Engineering, Vol. 36, No. 7, 2012. 11 / 945
78 Chul-ho Kim․Yoon-sik Kim․Hyun-woo Jung․Seung-nam Ryu․Kyoung-kuk Yoon

3.3 Short circuit analysis Table 8: Short circuit current of Feeder HV1
The high voltage bus feeder of a drilling rig is
Type 1/2 Cycle 1.5~4 Cycle
sectionized in 4 buses and these buses are
Generator 3.188 3.188
connected in open-ring topology.
Service load 0.538 0.238

Table 7: Condition for Short circuit analysis Total 3.705 3.414

Type Condition Remarks (unit : kA [Link])

ANSI related class
Standard
C37.010-1999 rules
100% Nominal
Prefault Voltage 11kV
kV
Contribution
1 level
level
Motor Based on Motor
exclude VFD
Contribution status

Depending on the operation mode, it could be

configured in a various ways, for example, the
isolated operation mode that each bus is seperated
Figure 6: Total fault current of all HV buses
electrically to the others.
The total amount of short-circuit current of
generators and service load is 3.705 (kA Symm.
rms) in the first 1/2 Cycle. As shown in the Table
8, it is certain that the short-circuit current by
service load is decreased gradually in the 1.5~4
Cycle.
Besides the fault current through the Tie-CB is
11.12kA in associated operation mode. It is large
enough current that is compared with the fault
current of HV1 bus in isolated operation mode. As
shown in Table 9 and Figure 6, the high voltage
Figure 5: HV1 fault current bus rating should be considered 14.8kA for the
total fault current of all 4 HV buses.
The fault current of a bus that is connected with
the others will be much greater than the fault Table 9: Total fault current of all HV buses
current of a bus which is isolated electrically from
Type 1/2 Cycle 1.5~4 Cycle
the others. So the rating of the bus and Tie-CB
must be considered the short-circuit current of the Generator 3.188 3.188

entire electrical power system respectively. Service load 0.538 0.238

The conditions to analyze the short-circuit current HV3 bus 11.116 10.242
are shown in Table 8 and the short-circuit analysis Total 14.822 13.656
results of the isolated high-voltage bus feeder HV1
(unit : kA [Link])
are also shown in Table 8 and Figure 5.

946 / Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Engineering, Vol. 36, No. 7, 2012. 11
 Electric Power System Design and Analysis for Drilling Rigs 79

4. Conclusion [3] Alf Kare Adnanes, “Status and inventions in

In this paper, the electrical power system of electrical power and thruster systems for
drilling rigs has been discussed with 2 operation drillships and semi-submersible rigs”,
mode which has the minimum and maximum Proceedings of the Dynamic Positioning
system load. Load flow analysis, voltage drop and Conference, pp. 28-30, 2004.
short-circuit current analysis have also been [4] P. Patil and K. Porate, “Starting analysis of
performed. induction motor: A computer simulation by
The voltage drop of high voltage and low ETAP power station”, Proceedings of the
voltage bus is within the permission limit at International Conference on Emerging Trends in
minimum and maximum load. And the load flow Engineering and Technology, pp. 494-499,
analysis shows the resonable result with appropriate 2009.
load distribution. The capacity of generators and [5] R. M. Calfo, J. A. Fulmer and J. E. Tessaro,
transformers is enough to feed the maximum load “Generators for use in electric marine ship
and has an acceptable margin for future load and propulsion systems”, Proceedings of the IEEE
emergency load. Power Engineering Society, vol. 1, pp.
There are some more difficulties in design and 254-259, 2002.
engineering of the off-shore plants electric power [6] Won Jeon, Yong-Peel, and Sang-Yong Jung,
system because it is required more severe and strict “Dynamic characteristic analysis at each
conditions. operating condition for electric ship propulsion
It will be necessary to study and research on system”, Journal of the Korean Society of
harmonic analysis, load analysis and transient Marine Engineering, vol. 32, pp. 1296-1302,
characteristics due to start/stop action between 2008.
generators and loads, in the future. [7] Jin-Seok Oh, Sung-Young Jung, Yeong-Kyung
Kong, Jae-Goo Bin and Han-Ho Kim, “Control

Acknowledgement algorithm development for design of cooling

This work is the outcome of a Manpower system in high-power propulsion motor”,
Development Program for Maritime Energy by the Journal of the Korean Society of Marine
Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs Engineering, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 195-201, 2010.
(MLTM)

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