Kelvin Hughes, a world leader in the design and supply of navigation and surveillance systems, has been contracted to supply two of its SBS-800-1 radars for installation on the offshore production platforms of the Shah Deniz Stage 2 gas project. This will bring the total number of Kelvin Hughes SharpEyeTM radars providing situational awareness for both offshore and onshore oil and gas facilities in the Azerbaijan and Caspian Sea region to 13.
Contracted by Ultra Electronics – Security and Surveillance Systems, the new radars, from Kelvin Hughes’ Shore Based Systems range, will be providing private, safety and general security surveillance for the sea area surrounding the platforms which are located some 70 km southeast of Baku, capital of Azerbaijan.
The SBS-800-1 meets the IALA recommendations for target detection, performance and availability. The SharpEye solid state transceiver is an upmast unit thereby reducing the considerable signal loss normally found with downmast systems. The high reliability negates the need for the frequent and routine maintenance associated with magnetron radars.
SharpEye technology uses advanced pulse compression and Doppler processing. This enables the SBS-800-1 to filter out sea and rain clutter and detect targets which other radars miss.
The SharpEye SBS-800 radar is particularly suited to oil and gas installations. The highest voltage within the system is 32v compared to magnetron devices producing in excess of 30,000 volts. Also, there is no need to cool the system thereby removing the need for air conditioning enclosures upmast. Another advantage of an upmast transceiver is the ability to transfer the radar data downmast via a fibre optic cable rather than a much more difficult to install and maintain waveguide.
Shah Deniz Stage 2, known as Full Field Development (FFD), will add a further 16 billion cubic metres per year (bcma) of gas production to the approximately 9 bcma produced by Shah Deniz Stage 1. One of the largest and most complex gas developments in the world, it will help to increase European energy security by bringing gas resources from the Caspian Sea directly to markets in Europe for the very first time via the 3,500 km Southern Gas Corridor pipeline.
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