VetcoGray SemStar5 Wins OTC Award for Next Generation Subsea Technology
GE Oil & Gas has been awarded a coveted "Spotlight on New Technology Award" by the Offshore Technology Conference for its next generation subsea electronics module, the VetcoGray SemStar5.
The highly regarded “Spotlight on New Technology Award” recognizes new and innovative technologies significantly impacting offshore exploration and production sectors. It is judged by an expert panel on five criteria: the technology should be new, innovative, proven, used in a broad range of applications, and have a significant impact on the industry.
The VetcoGray SemStar5 (previously codenamed SEM5) is a fifth generation Subsea Electronics Module for use in subsea production control systems. This innovative product offers new levels of Open Architecture IP-enabled communication capabilities through the application of a truly modular design approach. The VetcoGray SemStar5 is designed to meet industry demands for standardization and expandability, while providing the infrastructure to support the higher bandwidth requirements of modern instrumentation and simultaneously offering ultra reliability. This fifth generation module draws on VetcoGray’s proven technologies from more than 25 years of subsea electronics experience and over a century in electronics and communications.
"The VetcoGray SemStar5 is a great example of technology innovation and a testament to GE’s outstanding cross-functional teamwork," explains Manuel Terranova, VetcoGray’s Senior Vice President for Subsea Production Systems. “We’ve managed to leap-frog the industry standard in a very short time by combining VetcoGray's vast subsea domain expertise with GE's know-how in ruggedized board design and its commitment to bringing open protocols and standard architecture to the market. This product will deliver benefits to subsea operators in the form of a structured subsea solution, allowing us to offer SemStar5 in one, two or three bay configurations that cover all subsea field developments."
The VetcoGray SemStar5 delivers open architecture communications access, modular TCP/IP backplane architecture, support for standard industry interfaces and obsolescence mitigation. Enhanced reliability is achieved with thermal management and modeling integral to the design, on-board diagnostics and fault tolerant I/O. The robust mechanical construction will meet and exceed shock, vibration and temperature-cycle requirements of ISO 13628-6 2006.
"The Spotlight on New Technology award is a testament to all the hard work put in by the development team, including engineering, sourcing, manufacturing and the controls and informatics product controls team in Nailsea, UK as well as the wider GE organization globally,” said Dean Arnison, VetcoGray’s Director of Controls & Informatics for Drilling & Production Systems.
The awards will be presented at the Reliant Park in Houston, Texas during OTC 2009, on Monday, May 4th at 4 p.m.
