After more than three months of laborious operation on the icy and snowy oil drilling site in Samara, Russia, an oil well of 3180 m has been successfully drilled recently by using an oil rig made in China.

Oil rigs are the highest-level application in the oil industry. Usually, they are used in complicated and harsh environments where there are rigid demands on the advancement and reliability of the equipment. The oil well is located in Samara, Russia, where the annual average temperature is 3.81 °C, and the average temperature of January and February is –13.9°C. The weather is very harsh, and therefore there are very high requirements on the quality and energy production stability of the equipment.

As the core components of oil drilling systems, electrical drive systems are designed with many process control points and performance requirements. Only manufacturers with practical application experience can enter this industry. In the past, the oil rig field has long been monopolized by international top brands.

Breaking Monopoly, Demonstrating China's "Core"

The heartening news came in 2017 that INVT stood out in the competition with numerous international and national top brands through its strategic cooperation with partners, excellent product performance, reliable product quality, and market reputation, signing the contract of providing core drive inverters for 11 Russia's low-temperature drilling systems. That had broken the long monopoly of international top brands and had been the first time of mass use of China's inverters in oil rigs. The installation of China's "cores" on Russia's oil equipment had caused a stir in the oil rig market.

Committed to Inner Power, Making Breakthroughs by Independent Innovation

Oil rigs are large and complex sets of equipment and are the real high-end field where drive systems are applied. All the main drive equipment of electric oil rigs, such as winch, rotary table, and slush pump, needs the driving of inverters, and the inverters must meet the demanding requirements on function, performance, and operation stability and reliability.

INVT has profound accumulations in the power electronics, automatic control, and information technology fields in the past 16 years. It can provide full sets of technologies for generating test reports and performance data and conducting prospective development in all links in the oil industry, such as drilling, exploiting, and transporting.

In the Russia's rig project, INVT provided the main power drives, the core components of the rigs, which adopted INVT's mature tri-level, low-voltage, and large-capacity inverter solution, featured low noise, large output capacity, high output voltage, and low current harmonics, and therefore provided better overall performance. In addition, the overall topological structure of tri-level inverters proved advantageous, and the volume was smaller. As a matter of fact, the product was developed by INVT years ago and has been put into mass use in coal mining machines.

Based on INVT's strong technical strength and experimental platform, the product sufficiently met the requirements of oil rigs, including working at low temperature, high reliability, and high driving performance. In addition, it integrated the international mainstream control modes, which enabled it to rival the international top brands in both function and performance.

Braving Harsh Weather, Pulling Together for Delivery

Great challenges came with the contract: the delivery time was tight, the technical requirements were demanding, and the difficulties were far beyond what was expected. Confronted with such great pressure, INVT team members, however, did not retreat. The marketing, sales, and R&D personnel worked with perseverance, the supply chain personnel spared no effort, and all the personnel rose to the challenges in the commissioning phase...

During the commissioning in China, it was late summer, and the rig was placed in an open area on the commissioning site where the temperature was 40°C high. The team, consisting of more than 20 members, worked under the intense heat of summer in the daytime and fought against mosquitoes at night. They performed commissioning and optimization over and over again with great patience and circumspection. Confronted with such harsh environment on the site, many of them fell ill due to the high pressure and alternating of coldness and hotness. However, nobody retreated. The commissioning tasks were eventually completed, and the acceptance was successfully complete.

The hot summer was gone, and the cold winter came. The operation site in Samara, Russia was lower than –10°C, cold, large, and empty, and the snow gleamed white. The INVT team members shared out the work and cooperated with each other. In spite of the harsh living and eating conditions, they were highly committed and followed through the whole process. They upgraded and optimized the equipment based on the on-site requirements and solved problems one by one, which helped complete the deep-well operation and was highly praised by the project owner.

Market-oriented and customer-centered, INVT has always committed to independent innovation, leading the development of industrial control technologies in China, and breaking the monopoly of foreign brands. Through the in-depth understanding of customer on-site application, customized service capabilities, and globalized service network, INVT is constantly developing the medium- and high-end markets.

In the Russia's low-temperature oil rig project, through the close cooperation with its partners such as the machinery manufacturers and electrical control suppliers, INVT had deepened its knowledge and understanding about the international oil rig industry, optimized and upgraded the adaptability of multi-drive products to the oil rig application, and established a service system for product application in the international oil rig market, taking a solid step forward to tap into the oil rig market and develop with international standards. In the future, INVT's products will serve the markets better in the global oil industry.