(Credit: Pixabay)A joint venture between Equinor, Shell, and TotalEnergies will create “Northern Lights,” the world’s first industrial carbon capture and storage project to develop an open and flexible infrastructure to safely store CO2 from industries across Europe. The first phase of the project is due to be completed mid-2024 and will have the capacity to permanently store up to 1.5 million tons of CO2 per year, with the ambition to expand to over five million tons per year in a second development phase.
ABB, a global technology company, will supply the automation, electrical and digital solutions to be integrated into the Northern Lights project to enable the remote operation of a new carbon capture terminal and ensure that the facility runs at optimum efficiency.
Leveraging its distributed control technology, ABB Ability System 800xA, operators will gain greater visibility into the operation of the Northern Lights terminal, with the ABB system analyzing real-time and historical data and instantly showing plant metrics and KPIs. As a result, operators will be able to make more accurate and informed decisions and review options for optimizing performance of assets and processes.
Purpose-built ships will transport captured and liquefied CO2 from emitters to the Northern Lights Øygarden Terminal in western Norway, which will be remotely operated from Equinor’s facilities at the Sture Terminal located approximately 7 km away. To enable remote operations, ABB will build a state-of-the-art Extended Operator Workstation at the Northern Lights Terminal which will work in tandem with the central control room in Sture, with the two communicating seamlessly to minimize response times and support 24/7 remote operations.
