Read an interesting post on the Emerson Process Experts blog on the story behind a wireless application on a North Sea oil and gas platform.  Of course what caught my attention was the fact that they were using OPC in their architecture.   The original press release focuses on the benefits of the wireless applications: cost savings, less wiring, ease of setup etc.  All things that are important when implementing something floating out in the middle of the North Sea!   Thanks to Jim Cahill for digging a bit more into the background of the project and highlighting the OPC applications.   Not only was OPC used in the initial setup and quality monitoring, it also provides real-time updates on the pressure readings.  Using the combination of wireless and OPC technologies StatoilHydro reaps big benefits:

“The real benefit is that the annular pressured is monitored continuously by the operations staff rather than twice a day through manual readings. Pressure drop in the annulus might indicate a problem with the well. These continuous measurements provide operators an opportunity to take corrective action much earlier to help avoid well rework and lost production.”

They don’t go into details on the data transfer between the platform and the shore, but I know there are off-shore setups that are making use of OPC here as well.  I’ve worked on an architecture that used OPC Tunneller to handle timeouts during periods of spotty network connection.   The system also used an OPC HDA data buffer at the platform and History Link to guarantee the delivery of any missed real-time data to the historian on the mainland.

Wireless is the new kid on the industrial automation block, so it gets a lot of attention.  Maybe OPC is such a given in so many systems, it just doesn’t get the limelight as much.  Oh well, that’s what this blog is for.