Oil & Gas - Drilling Rig Monitoring

The oil and gas industry holds some of Monico’s longest-standing clients, and drilling rigs take up a large percentage of that clientele. An application we work with regularly is monitoring of the generators used for power generation on drilling rigs. Many of the most popular genset models have only a very basic local monitoring system, and no generator controls. In most applications there is no monitoring of the engines by the rig control system. There is tremendous value to monitoring the generator engines to maximize fuel economy, minimize downtime, and drastically reduce rig blackouts

The quality of our products, the expertise we have for making the product work in this extremely difficult environment, and our expert support team  have been the key to the success of Monico’s gateways in the drilling rig arena.

Highlights:

• Track fuel consumption on each engine to develop fuel economy strategies
• Examine electrical efficiency of a rig and help reduce rig blackouts
• Monitor engine hours for scheduling preventive maintenance
• Receive Email/SMS notifications on alarms and shutdowns
• Utilize events and diagnostics capabilities to solve problems more quickly and efficiently as well as prevent them in the future

Drilling Monitoring Systems and Oil Rig Monitoring Systems

Drilling Contractors are now installing Monico Gateways for the integration of engines into the overall rig automation system. One major drilling contractor reports that engine integration has virtually eliminated rig blackouts and significantly reduced fuel consumption. 

In the onshore drilling rig market in North America, Monico has well over 1500 Gateways installed that integrate the power generators into the oil rig monitoring system or the rig automation system, or to provide remote monitoring capabilities for predictive maintenance and managing fuel consumption. Over the past ten years, our Gateways have become standard equipment on all new rigs for several major drilling contractors, and one major contractor has retrofitted approximately 150 existing rigs with our Gateways. In addition, we have added many different types of data analysis to cover much more than just fuel consumption.

Technicalities of Natural Gas and Oil Rig Monitoring

Drilling rigs are one of the most challenging applications for communications. Typically, we are forced to run communications wires in the same raceway as extremely high current power wires into the power house which contains several variable frequency drives that create a huge amount of electrical noise. Our experience in this environment has forced us to learn how to properly wire these installations to operate with rock-solid reliability. We will typically install an isolated repeater to eliminate any noise collected in the wiring run from affecting the engine operation, and proper grounding of the engine and the drain wires is criticalGenset data is brought in via the dedicated port, which leaves (2) RS-232 ports, (1) RS-485 port, and (1) Ethernet port for gathering data from other system components, such as Woodward controllers. Each serial port can communicate via one protocol independently, either master or slave. The Ethernet port can communicate via four protocols simultaneously. The addition of I/O modules for analog and digital I/O provides a powerful monitoring solution. The ability to push all data to PLCs such as Allen Bradley, GE Fanuc, Siemens and Omron are very important.

Monitoring: Oilfield Generators by Monico CEO, Doyle Taylor