Subsea transformers are an ABB innovation. Deployed in extreme conditions in ultra-deepwater, these high-tech workhorses provide the power for heavy-duty equipment on the sea floor – enabling declining oil and gas fields to be more productive and making new deepwater fields accessible.
ABB has delivered subsea transformers for fields in the North and Norwegian seas and the Gulf of Mexico for operation at depths of up to 2,000 m.
Later this year ABB will deliver nine subsea transformers for the world’s first subsea gas compressor station at the Åsgard oil and gas field in the Norwegian Sea. Although they will operate at a depth of 400 m, they are capable of operating in the deepest fields on the planet – 3,000 m below the surface.
ABB delivered the world’s first commercial subsea transformers in 1998 – a pioneering achievement that helped take subsea oil and gas extraction into a new and more productive dimension.
These robust, maintenance-free and exceptionally reliable transformers are used to power the field equipment on the seabed – boosters, pumps, compressors, pipeline heating systems, frequency converters and wave hubs.
They operate in some of the most extreme environments imaginable for transformers – at depths of several thousand meters and at distances of 50 to 100 km from the nearest platform or shore. The performance levels required of deep-sea equipment are very high, and reliability is decisive.
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May 14, 2013