OREANDA-NEWS. FACTS technology to support major expansion project at Norway’s Nyhamna gas plant supplying power to up to 22 million UK homes

A customized Static Var Compensator (SVC), recently installed by ABB for the leading construction contracting company Kvaerner, is helping to increase production of the gas plant and provide greater reliability to the Norwegian transmission grid. The plant, operated by Shell and located on Norway's west coast, can process up to 70 million cubic meters of gas a day directly from the Ormen Lange field.

Work is underway to increase capacity to 84 million, to enable the plant to also process production from the new Polarled Pipeline. The first field to be connected is the Aasta Hansteen field. Once the Nyhamna plant expansion is completed, it has capacity to provide enough gas to power 22 million UK homes. It currently supplies around 20 percent of the UK’s natural gas and represents about a fifth of Norway’s total gas production.

Avoiding outages

Production outages in oil and gas fields, often caused by power quality issues, are expensive and need to be prevented. The SVC is a device that compensates for fluctuations and allows more electricity to flow through the network to improve power quality. It reduces outages caused by voltage drops or failures while ensuring that the pump drives and other vital equipment receive the power they require. The project took place in a live gas plant, adding more complexity to one of Norway’s biggest industrial projects.

«ABB was instrumental in achieving this important milestone for the whole Nyhamna Expansion project,» said Lars Eide, Executive Vice President at Kvaerner. «The SVC project has been executed professionally and I appreciate the constructive cooperation between Shell, ABB and Kvaerner leading up to a successful completion of the SVC plant.»