High reliability power solution for subsea applications

Powerbox has announced a new technology platform to power industrial applications requiring high reliability and resilience in extreme environments. Designed to power subsea equipment such as gas and oil monitoring and control systems situated on the seafloor, fed from an AC or DC high voltage line feeder the PRBX VB410-380 power solution delivers 48VDC with very high reliability and resilience. The unit comprises a pre-stage converter and a secondary stage with redundant power modules and for monitoring and control, a full set of communications and interfaces. Industrial applications such as gas and oil situated on the seafloor, or long distance transmission cables require very specific power solutions to supply a subset of electronic equipment operating 24/7 with no downtime, and where maintenance is either very expensive or simply not an option. These applications are usually powered from the shore or from a technical platform generator via a high voltage line, which depending on the power station could be AC or DC voltage within the range of 300VAC to 900VAC, or 400VDC to 1500VDC, ultimately requiring a 48VDC intermediate bus voltage to power electronic equipment. Outputs need to be able to operate in parallel in order to increase the power or to offer redundancy. Equipment deployed in extreme environments such as the seafloor must be designed for very high reliability and resilience and able to operate within a temperature range of -25C to +80C without derating, using conduction cooling only. Subsea electronic equipment is often contained within a very tight tubular container fixed to the cable. The company’s solution is designed to guarantee the maximum level of isolation between the high-voltage input and the low-voltage output, but with sufficient physical isolation between the different components to allow for tight integration. “Delivering power to extreme applications such as subsea ones is always a challenge for designers. But in developing standardized, easily reusable sub-systems such as the VB410-380 we have shortened the design cycle and time-to-market for our customers” said Patrick Le Fèvre, Powerbox’s chief marketing and communication officer. “Expanding sales opportunities, its design philosophy makes it eminently suitable for other applications such as the chemical industry and in highly restricted areas where human intervention is both complicated and risky.”