Grant: Engage Grants Program

Avalon Controls Ltd. is a control and instrumentation company located in Mount Pearl, NL, Canada. It hasbeen providing automation, control and instrumentation engineering services to the offshore oil and gasindustries in Atlantic Canada over the last two decades. Since the price of oil started to fall, Avalon Controlshas been considering the possible application of high-efficiency electric submersible pump (ESP) drive systemsinto the offshore oil fields in Newfoundland in order to achieve high production rate by increasing thedownhole pressure. However, the oil well condition changes over the time due to the presence of gas andsolids, and it requires automatic adjustment to the operation of the pump within the safe operating zones forsteady oil and gas production. The existing ESP drive systems are not fully autonomous, and are subjected tofailures due to human operator's mistakes. For a harsh Atlantic offshore environment, the total intervention costto replace and/or repair an ESP unit is millions of dollars. Avalon Controls is facing challenges with thedevelopment of an autonomous control technique for variable speed ESP drives that can self-adjust itsoperation with the changing reservoir conditions in order to avoid failure, and also can maintain the optimalproduction rate. The proposed project will address this problem, and an intelligent autonomous feedbackcontrol algorithm will be developed for ESP drive systems to maximize the production and the efficiency. Thecontrol algorithm will also monitor the downhole conditions and will adjust the ESP drive's operatingfrequency accordingly. The proposed autonomous control system will enhance the reliability and theperformance of ESPs which are critical requirements for use in harsh offshore environment. This research willprovide this company the ability to become a world leader in downhole ESP control and monitoring systemsfor deep water offshore oil production. The proposed autonomous control system for IPM-ESP drives willintroduce an economic and viable lift technology to use for the Newfoundland and Labrador offshore oil andgas production in the upcoming years.