Nexus Controls Provides Rapid Software Solution During COVID-19
Over the past few years, our customer was encountering periodic issues derived from the control systems connected to turbines. Due to pandemic COVID-19 hitting Europe and Norway, all travel had been was banned, and our team had to find an alternative approach. Nexus Controls achieved the first-ever remote services for the commissioning of an engineered software package.
The operation is located at an important offshore platform in Norway. To solve these issues, they asked about getting support from Nexus Controls. While the project itself was small, the synergy of teams across Baker Hughes many product lines is impressive.
The platform site itself is unique, located off the coast of Norway, an intense and important part of the world. The site runs three LM2500 Baker Hughes gas turbines driving generators and one LM2500 driving a compressor. The control systems for these gas turbines have been supplied by Nexus Controls in 2014 as part of a major overhaul project. After 6 years of running successfully with the units, the customer approached Nexus Controls for a software modification to be implemented with all units to increase availability and ease of operation.
The Nexus Controls team in Fot, Hungary office led the effort of preparing the software and participate in customer meetings to verify and agree the changes. Once the package was ready, our local field engineer was intending to travel offshore and implement the software. The customer was eager to implement the changes and requested that Nexus Controls investigate possibility of installing software remotely with the help of local operators. After a detailed review of risk and possible mitigations at the site with support of TPS (Baker Hughes' Turbomachinery and Process Solutions) which maintains the covered rotating equipment fleet on the platform, Nexus Controls agreed to the suggested set up.
The customer arranged for remote access by our engineers. The secure, remote connection was tested extensively and found to be working well. At the agreed date, the customer operations stopped the turbines, Nexus Controls engineering connected and our engineer guided them through the actions to be taken.
Going about the fix one machine at a time, the project was executed on time. The customer was impressed by our engineering capabilities and very happy with the result. Although in future as situation normalizes, the customer will continue to use qualified personnel from Nexus Controls to travel offshore for reasons of responsibility and liability, the success of this exercise will have potential to offset discussions around remote services contract starting with the offshore platform for troubleshooting and remote support.