Abstract
Wet mate electrical connectors are a key technology for the deepwater industry, and can be a significant proportion of the cost of a subsea processing project. To operate sustainably in a low value oil market, manufacturers of subsea electrical connectors must change from their current project driven, custom product approach. Cornerstones of the new approach to the current market must be standardisation and modularization.
This paper will focus on the challenges posed in designing and qualifying a connector system to meet a cross-industry specification, e.g. SEPS SP-1001 (soon to be an IEEE/IEC specification). It will focus on the difficulties in finding a common interpretation of a specification, designing in complete compliance with a cross-industry specification, and include detail of the planning and execution of on-going qualification programs, which are being run in accordance with cross-industry controls (fibre-optic and electrical) and power specifications.
We will examine the different ways in which a connector specification can be interpreted and how the interpretation drives the connector design, test arrangement design, and cost. This interpretation is particularly important when examining the cost of a qualification program and associated equipment, with costs for specialist qualification equipment contributing significantly to the cost of new product development.
Modularization is also a key enabler for cost reduction, allowing the same connector family to be used for multiple applications with only configuration, rather than project or application specific redesign. We will focus on the difficulties found when trying to identify a number of industry requirements which can be combined into a specific product, for example, subsea power distribution, long-step out, subsea compression, and direct electrical heating.
The focus on this paper will be about presenting real-world experience of design and qualification of connectors based on three case studies, for subsea power distribution, long step out electrical controls, and long step out fibre controls.
