Design of large power plant in oil and gas facilities

Today, to take advantage of better availability, lower maintenance and easier control, drivers of large equipments in Oil & Gas plants are more and more electrical motors driven by variable speed drive systems. So the needs for electrical power are going up. In addition the plants are located in places where the network is insufficient or not safe enough to guarantee the required reliability / continuity of operation of the process. Consequently, they must be self-powered and it is more frequent to find islanded power plants of more than a thousand megawatts. The intent of this paper is to present the experience and lessons learned in designing those large power plants and outline the key points for a successful design of those systems.