Investigating the Techno-economic Utility of Integrating an Optimized PV/diesel Hybrid System in an Entire Oil Field in the Western-dessert in Egypt

Abstract

Artificial lifting is considered as the most common technique in oil and gas production industry. However, from the electrical energy consumption prospective, artificial lifting is a heavy consumer. In the absence of a grid, oil and gas stack holders are forced to utilize diesel generator for energy production. Herein, an added cost of operation and maintenance is included in the oil production cost. The purpose of this work is to develop a systematic optimization methodology for utilizing renewable energy resources, specifically Photovoltaic (PV), in Oil & Gas Industry. The study has been applied on an entire oil field in the Egyptian western dessert. The load is operated with an integrated solar-assisted system and stand-alone diesel generator. The annual energy requirements using the Levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for ten sucker rod pumping units have been evaluated. A metaheuristic optimizer (Water Cycle Optimization Technique WCOT) has been utilized to optimize the PV contribution in the hybrid PV/diesel system proposed. Moreover, centralized, and distributed generation systems have been investigated technically and economically. The results have shown that the hybrid centralized system can provide up to 62% reduction in the LCOE with respect to the running diesel generator 24/7 system.