Unlikely companions: wind turbine in oil field

Wyoming energy testing ground RMOTC matches renewable with fossil fuels

BY STEVE QUINN FOR GREENING OF OIL

It stands as an icon for renewable energy—right smack in the middle of an oil field.

It’s a wind turbine and the odd juxtaposition is no mistake.

It was placed in Teapot Dome, a U.S. Department of Energy oil field near Casper, Wyoming, as a test of how renewable energy and fossil fuel development can co-exist on the same block.

The turbine is part of the government-sponsored testing field known as the Naval Petroleum Reserve #3 and operated as the Rocky Mountain Oilfield Testing Center, or RMOTC.

And while it’s not supplying power to the entire 10,000-acre site—it’s not even generating enough for one building—it is seen as a portent of things to come.

“This could potentially be among the first showing how alternative energy can be used in oil and gas operations to reduce operating costs by generating power on site rather than bringing it from the national power grid,” said Mike Curtis, technical services manager for RMOTC.

The oil field serves as a 10,000-acre testing “sandbox” of sorts for industry, academia and private inventors wishing to test new equipment or applications of standard equipment in oil field development.

The turbine is one of RMOTC’s on-going tests that focus on reducing the external power usage for oilfield operations.

Another involves the use of natural gas produced from the Teapot Dome field to power a device called a WhisperGen Stirling cycle generator.

That’s an electric generator using a high-efficiency engine that burns fuel externally rather than within the engine—to power oilfield pumps.

Wisps of wind power on oil field

In this case, the turbine is as symbolic as it is functional.

The turbine has the capacity to generate six kilowatts of power, but it rarely meets capacity, even in a state like Wyoming where wind is a constant.

Turbine-generated power essentially feeds into a building transformer that powers an operations building.

Curtis said theoretically if the building’s demand is low, the excess turbine-generated power could be distributed over a grid for use elsewhere in the field.

Realistically, however, the building’s demand is greater the turbine capacity, so the building is supplemented with grid power.

“The cost effectiveness is similar to providing local energy supply to ranches,” Curtis said. “Down the road, where will we go with things like this? We’ve done tests in the past using solar panels to power small pumps. There’s certainly interest in testing technologies that can reduce infrastructure power coming from the grid.

“I think what you’re seeing is that there is a lot of general interest out there in decentralized power sources.” 

Sometimes the lessons are even more basic.

“The things I’ve learned is turbines in general don’t put out their maximum capacity all the time because wind quality varies,” Curtis said.

“Even though Wyoming is a windy state, there are occasions when it doesn’t provide power at all. That is the nature of the turbine beast.”

Turbine serving industry and higher education

The turbine was placed at RMOTC by Casper College in November 2008 because the community college wanted to find a moderate industrial application.

The college’s Renewable Energy Technology Department received a grant for the turbine.

Here, students learn how these technologies can be used in a wide range of industrial cases.

But the officials at RMOTC are paying attention as well.

At six kilowatts of capacity this turbine is really a wisp of wind compared to those erected at various wind farms across the country.

Manufactured by Proven Energy in Scotland, this turbine gets dwarfed by the skyline of turbines on farms whose equipment stands from 50 meters to 90 meters. The Proven is 15 meters.

It’s an ideal size for mature oil fields like RMOTC’s Teapot Dome, which has become a “stripper field.”

Stripper field wells produce a handful of barrels of oil a day, pulling up the dribs and drabs of the oil.

“We are in a world where almost everything is coming from coal-fired power stations,” Curtis said. “If you have smaller locations with generation capacity doing non-critical tasks or working on a flexible schedule and can flatten out that fluctuating demand, down the road you could have smaller coal-fired stations.”

As small as this turbine is, he said it enables researchers to think large.

“The pie in the sky application for me is to produce fossil fuels, which will be needed for higher level use, without using fossil energy to lift oil from the wells,” he said.

“If you wanted to go one step further, there would be enough energy supply produced in oil fields to provide excess power to the grid and complement energy security,” Curtis said.

“And if it produces enough power, if we shut down the wells temporarily, perhaps we can provide enough power to the national grid, then resume production,” he said.

Placing renewable energy facilities on oil fields takes advantage of existing infrastructure, allowing other areas to be untouched, said Jim Nations, the site’s public relations program manager.

“The impacts to the land at NPR-3 have already taken place,” he said. “You still have communities who don’t like the skyline impacts of a small wind farm. If we can get a battery of geothermal and wind turbines and a collection of solar panels as demonstrations, people may be more accepting of those technologies operating in old oil and gas fields rather than be in view from their communities.”

Links of Interest:

March article about RMOTC

RMOTC Web site