Understanding Trace-Heated Pipelines Electrical Protection Challenges and Associated Solutions

Oil & Gas industry is a major consumer of electrical power. Its focus on subsea oil fields development lead to emerging of new types of electrical loads and new design approaches. One of such technologies is Electrically Trace Heated Pipe-in-Pipe (ETH-PiP). This paper focuses on power system protection challenges posed by electrical loads in form of long, heated pipelines with distributed electrical parameters based on ETH-PiP particulars. Since such electrical heating systems are terminated with permanent short circuit, a thorough protection analysis has to be conducted to ensure high robustness of the system. After a brief overview of the system application and its driving factors, a characteristic of such electrical load is described, followed by an example of analysis and discussion of typical protection functions applicability.