Culzean is a gas condensate field located in the North Sea and is made up of two deep reservoirs, with reserves estimated at between 250 million and 300 million barrels of oil equivalent, making it the largest gas project developed in the United Kingdom in the last 25 years. Three Siemens Gas Turbine Generators supply the power needed for the platform’s operations.
Our engineers carried out commissioning of the GTGs in two stages. Static commissioning was carried out at SLP Shipyard in Lowestoft, UK. This comprised static checks on the generators and the current and voltage transformers, as well as commissioning tests on the Generator Control Panels. Our work on the control panels included secondary injection tests of the Siemens Siprotec protection relays, the synchronising relays and the metering, plus setup of the dual redundant Basler excitation systems.
Dynamic commissioning was carried out on the offshore platform. The work scope included checks on the neutral earthing resistors, confirmation of the switchgear interface with the Generator Control Panels, then full dynamic commissioning of all three units to prove the protection, excitation and synchronisation systems.
Following the commissioning of the three GTGs, the Culzean platform has been successfully producing since mid-2019 and meeting up to 5% of the United Kingdom’s gas demands.
