Abstract
Offshore petroleum installations are conventionally equipped with local power supply based on fossil fuel. Alternative power supply, e.g., wind power, has a large potential to reduce the fossil fuel use, and thereby the CO 2 and NO emissions. Potential benefits with such a solution are studied by considering a system consisting of five interconnected oil platforms linked to a an offshore wind farm. Compared to the case without wind power, an overall reduction in fuel consumption of 21-32% was found, depending on the operation strategy for the gas turbines. The gas savings yield revenues that were used to calculate the break-even cost for the wind farm investment. A small wind farm investment would make the combined wind/platform solution favorable compared with the default configuration. Sensitivity analysis is quantified the dependency between different parameters and the break-even wind farm cost.
