Third-party representation
In addition to the ICSS, usually, there are third-party compressor controls, turbine controls, power management systems, or other controls that need to be simulated, and this control is outside the scope of the ICSS.
This can be represented in two ways:
- Simplified and modeled in the process model
- Using the supplier emulation and integrating this into the simulator
The first option is cheaper, but its effectiveness is lower. The second is expensive but is far more effective.
On one FPSO project, the compressor controls were CCC, and the emulation of the CCC was used. While this solution was expensive, we could tune the compressor controls within a week onshore using the simulator. The tuning parameters were used offshore, and a huge saving of cost was achieved.
In the much less stressful simulation environment, we needed a week to tune the compressors. Now imagine doing this offshore while trying to commission or start up the compressor. This will take at least 3 additional weeks, if not more.
In the simulation environment, we could run the compressor sequence as many times as we want in a day. This is impossible offshore.