Good afternoon, Bryan here at SPOC Automation. We’re back with another installment of our Two-Minute drive series. I’m excited. I get to talk about a topic I’m really passionate about and that is saltwater injection and disposal applications.
I’ve been really fortunate to be involved in a large number of these projects, whether it’s working directly with the water midstream operator, contractors, automation contractors, electrical contractors — all across the gamut. And during these installed projects, we kept coming across the same several needs that the local operators wanted to get better at. But before we jump into that, I think it’s often assumed that the VFD is an accessory to the pump. Well, that’s wrong. The VFD is actually the heart of your system. It controls and protects your primary mover; without your primary mover, you’re not injecting water downhole.
The first area that most operators wanted to improve on was start-up efficiency. It’s fairly common in these style projects that construction gets delayed or gets behind and the project bumps right up against that contract injection date. Well, if you’re sized wrong, not ready, or maybe the automation system is not complete because of mechanical changes, you can’t meet that date. And that’s a problem. Well, when you use the SPOC HPS or PDP package and you distribute the controls down to the VFD locally, you actually can turn that side on properly, protect your pump and start the system up. We’ve had numerous projects where we actually helped the operator startup their site a month, two months prior to the site being fully complete. And that’s huge. That’s a huge benefit to that operator.
Secondly, when you distribute those controls down to your VFD locally, you get better pump protection. You make a large investment in that pump and you want to protect it and operate it efficiently. So when you have an HPS or PDP package, you can bring all those field signals and safeties directly to the drive, pass it up to your main site automation, and run in harmony. It also allows you to run that plant pump locally. Protect it, do maintenance, all without a worry that you’re not properly protecting your primary mover.
I hope you found this information useful. If you have any questions, please reach out to me or anybody on the SPOC Automation team. Please be sure to check out our website and all of our social media outlets. And as always, pump long and prosper. Be safe, guys.