Stone Junction Ltd

ABB collaborates with Equinor on digital integration to improve operations at offshore assets

26 May 2021

Gina Krog - Image courtesy of Equinor (Credit: Ole Jørgen Bratland-min)
Gina Krog - Image courtesy of Equinor (Credit: Ole Jørgen Bratland-min)

ABB has begun a pilot project with Equinor in Norway, at the Gina Krog platform in the North Sea. The project enables a digital transformation of monitoring of critical electrical systems on the platform, accelerating Equinor’s condition monitoring capabilities with a focus on improving safety, reducing operational costs, and increasing production efficiency.

Adopting a collaborative maintenance model enables Equinor to start the journey from today’s planned maintenance programme towards prescriptive maintenance. 

Data will be transferred from the platform’s power management system and electrical condition monitoring system to Equinor’s OMNIA Microsoft Azure cloud platform, using an onsite ABB EdgeInsight data pump. 

From here live data will be securely streamed to ABB’s own Microsoft Azure cloud where a dedicated team will utilise the data to continuously improve condition monitoring technology and tools to be used by ABB’s Reliability Service team.

By streaming data directly to ABB, Equinor is securely transporting high-level information from assets that will deliver transparency on performance, better predictability, and process optimisation.

Per Erik Holsten, Head of Energy Industries for Northern Europe at ABB commented: “By collaborating with Equinor in this way, we will make sure that they have real time electrical equipment health visibility. In addition, we are contributing to meeting reliability performance targets and reducing the cost of interruptions.”

As the pilot progresses, ABB will take over day-to-day condition monitoring operations for the critical electrical equipment, to be managed offsite by ABB’s Reliability Service team. This will be done in close co-operation with Gina Krog personnel and Equinor’s Integrated Operations Center (IOC). ABB engineers will work inside Equinor’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, helping with generation of notifications.

Vice President Operations, Bernt E. Tysseland from Equinor said: “Through this project and collaboration we can utilise operations data in a much leaner and faster way. By allowing ABB’s experts to work digitally alongside Equinor personnel we can improve safety and reduce maintenance administration hours.”

Once onboarded, ABB and Equinor will jointly investigate the opportunity to apply the same approach for other relevant equipment.

Holsten finished: “The COVID-19 pandemic, alongside the global drive towards more sustainable operations, has highlighted the importance of building resilience and enabling adaptability within operational models. Increasingly our customers are looking for the benefits that leaner, more autonomous onsite operations, supported by teams remotely, offsite can deliver.”


Contact Details and Archive...

Print this page | E-mail this page


Optimal Drive Technology

This website uses cookies primarily for visitor analytics. Certain pages will ask you to fill in contact details to receive additional information. On these pages you have the option of having the site log your details for future visits. Indicating you want the site to remember your details will place a cookie on your device. To view our full cookie policy, please click here. You can also view it at any time by going to our Contact Us page.