Can the Industry Play Catch Up with IIoT? What Does it Need to Get Ahead of the Curve?

Wednesday, June 12^th @ 10:30am

Palomino Room C

BMO Centre, Stampede Park

Calgary, Alberta

Join ETC’s CEO Mark Scantlebury for a thorough discussion on how companies can use IIoT to improve operational efficiency, increase revenue, minimize their environmental footprint, and decrease safety risks.

Moderated by Trevor Cain, Senior Account Manager at Avnet Inc., this panel of industry experts includes Ed Ladd, Wireless Solutions Architect Director at Emerson Automation Solutions, Rami Zewail, R&D Consultant and Co-founder of Smart Empower Innovation Labs Inc., Dave Shook, President and CEO of ShookIOT, and James Sartor, Account Technology Strategist at Microsoft.

REGISTER FOR FREE

While you’re there, don’t forget to stop by booth 1180 in the BMO Centre to check out some of the latest projects ETC has been working on! Say hello to Robert Ward (Business Development), Shane Soum (Channel Sales Manager), and Chris Molnar (Technical Account Manager) who will be onsite for the duration of the show and arranging meetings outside of conference hours.

This year ETC will share our booth with two associations we’re proud to be part of; Alberta IoT Association and Oilfield IoT Consortium. If you’re interested in learning more about either of these organizations, they will have members on site to answer any questions you have.

For more information on the Global Petroleum Show, click here.

Download the full Technical Conference Brochure here.

The post Can the Industry Play Catch Up with IIoT? appeared first on Extreme Telematics Corp..

As the calendar flips forward, we look back on 2017 as a year of transition.  After a very challenging 2016 we bounced back and managed to have more consistency in our sales over the last 12 months. The primary focus for the company was to invest in training for our resellers, which helped them to service our mutual customers better. This added stability to the business and provided a base that enabled us to invest in growth. I am proud to say that Cyclops is now the #1 sensor in plunger lift and the ALiEn² line of controllers are sold and serviced by more service companies than any other plunger lift controller.

Throughout the year we added 5 more team members, continued to invest in new products and services, implemented a new ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system, and moved to a new facility (5925 12^th Street SE, Bay 14 Calgary, AB) with 2.5x the space in November. Our new facility will allow us to handle more of our final assembly/logistics and grow our team so that we can increase quality and shorten lead times.

As we move in to 2018, we are preparing for another year of growth at ETC.  We plan to expand our account management team to increase the level of training and support that we provide to our customers and resellers. We are expecting to see an increased adoption of the Sasquatch Plunger Velocity Sensor as we continue to work with more than a dozen production companies that are integrating the sensor into their SCADA system.  As such, we plan to add technical resources to support feature enhancements and maintenance on the Sasquatch as well as our existing control and sensor products.

2018 will also be the year that ETC expands in to more vertical markets and starts to fulfill our mission to democratize industrial automation. We are actively working on a product, Morpheus, which will dramatically change the way that technology is deployed in the oilfield. Our goal is to deliver more seamless connectivity to existing oilfield controls and sensors while providing a platform for software developers to monitor, control, and optimize any oilfield asset without needing skills in hardware design. Morpheus will reduce the initial cost of hardware as well as the ongoing costs of data while providing a path forward for a new type of control system. We are already lining up beta customers and partners in preparation for a launch this spring/summer.

Follow us on LinkedIn or Facebook to keep up to date on the most recent happenings at ETC!

Mark Scantlebury
President and CEO
Extreme Telematics Corp.

The post ETC Year in Review – 2017 appeared first on Extreme Telematics Corp..

A number of producers, including Anadarko, Conoco, Shell, and BP have been working with a group of plunger equipment manufacturers to better understand how springs and lubricators wear and eventually fail.  This group is now putting forward a new standard called API 11 PL which dictates how plunger equipment needs to be designed, tested, and maintained to reduce failures.  The key output of this standard is to provide a Kinetic Energy Rating for each plunger lift well head.

How can you make use of Kinetic Energy to reduce the maintenance and failures of your plunger lift wells?

• You can record the Kinetic Energy of each plunger arrival using the mass and velocity of the plunger
• This can be compared in real time to manufacturer’s ratings to decide when to inspect/replace springs
• Alerts can be used to inform operators which wells need to be addressed allowing their time to be better focused on problem wells

Here is an article with more detail:

https://www.epmag.com/using-kinetic-energy-plunger-lift-safety-and-maintenance-1659221#p=full

What else has changed?

• The Sasquatch plunger velocity sensor has been deployed by several major producers all across North America
• Sasquatch has been reduced in price to be more in alignment with plunger arrival sensors.  It can be used instead of (not in addition to) a plunger arrival sensor.
• App notes, simplifying the setup process for Sasquatch and ABB Total Flow and Production Manager have been published to reduce the time and cost associated with adopting Sasquatch. (http://etcorp.ca/resource-center/application-notes/)

Please contact us for more information.

The post Stop throwing away perfectly good lubricator springs! appeared first on Extreme Telematics Corp..

In order to support our growth as a company and better serve the needs of our customers and resellers, ETC’s head office has relocated to a new, 2.5 times larger location within Calgary. In addition to more office space, our new location includes a designated manufacturing & assembly space, warehouse space, and a large, state of the art laboratory for our growing Engineering team. Follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter for photos of our new office, or contact us to book a tour!

Effective immediately, ETC’s new head office address will be as follows:

5925 – 12th Street SE, Bay 14

Calgary, Alberta T2H 2M3

Canada

We no longer have a fax number, so please scan and email any documents to info@etcorp.ca. All other contact information remains unchanged. Please update your records!

The post We’ve Moved! appeared first on Extreme Telematics Corp..

In order to support our growth as a company and better serve the needs of our customers and resellers, ETC’s head office will be moving to a new, 2 1/2 times larger location within Calgary in November.  In addition to more office space, our new location includes a designated manufacturing & assembly space, warehouse space, and a large, state of the art laboratory for our growing Engineering team. Follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter for photos of our new digs, or contact us to book a tour!

ETC’s new head office address will be as follows:

5925 – 12th Street SE, Bay 14

Calgary, Alberta T2H 2M3

Canada

All other contact information remains unchanged.

The post ETC is MOVING! appeared first on Extreme Telematics Corp..

Vision can be used with Cyclops and Sasquatch to monitor plunger arrivals in real time at site.  With Vision, operators can view the raw signals used for Geomagnetic Sensing.  The sensors are put into a Full Debug Mode where the magnetic field readings are streamed to Vision.  This is displayed in a graphical format so the user can see exactly how and when a plunger moves the earth’s magnetic field.  As the plunger nears the sensor, Vision will indicate when an arrival has occurred and what the measured velocity (from Sasquatch) is.  Seeing this in real time allows the operator to adjust the position of the sensor or the sensitivity to see how the sensor performance is affected.

Vision is also used to manage the software that is running on ETC’s devices.  It automatically checks ETC’s server for new versions of software when connected to the internet.  The software files are made available for on-site download to any controller or sensor.  You are never stuck with the version of software that came with your ETC device.

Vision now supports connecting to Modbus devices such as Sasquatch to get real time configuration and status information.  This allows an operator to install and interact with Sasquatch without having to connect it into an RTU.  Soon Vision will also support interacting with ETC controllers via Modbus as well.

To download Vision, click here. You will also need the Link hardware, so please contact us for information on how to order.

The post Connecting ETC Sensors and Controllers to Vision appeared first on Extreme Telematics Corp..

A new specification from the American Petroleum Institute (API), 11 PL is emerging in plunger lift, covering plunger lift lubricators and related equipment. Operators and equipment manufacturers have collaborated over the last few years to create a common set of standards for the plunger lift industry to help identify quality manufacturers who properly design, construct, and test plunger lift equipment for reliable, safe operation.

One of the main outputs of this new standard is the requirement for manufacturers to provide a kinetic energy rating for their lubricator and spring combinations.  This rating helps to identify the types of impacts that their equipment can take and allows the control system to compare real time kinetic energy measurements. Kinetic energy allows us to measure, track, and react to real impacts at surface instead of relying on velocity or over engineering of equipment to ensure safe and reliable operation of a plunger lift well.

The kinetic energy of an arriving plunger can be calculated using the mass and velocity of the plunger.

The mass of the plunger is already specified by plunger manufacturers leaving us to measure velocity at surface in real time in order to calculate the kinetic energy.  Historically, operators have been content to rely on average velocity of a plunger, which is calculated from the well depth and the time for the plunger to rise.  This is not nearly accurate enough to be used for the kinetic energy calculation as it does not account for acceleration or deceleration and whether the plunger started at bottom of the well or not.

The Sasquatch plunger velocity sensor is a new innovation from ETC that uses Geomagnetic Sensing Technology™ to measure, store, and relay the plunger arrival and the surface velocity of the plunger.  This gives an accurate velocity of the plunger in real time just before it strikes the anvil. The ALiEn2 plunger lift controller or any other real time plunger control system can take the surface velocity and combine it with the mass of the plunger to get the kinetic energy of each plunger arrival.  This can be compared to a user defined threshold to determine if any other action needs to be taken.

In all ETC controllers, the user can specify both a hard hit and dangerous hit threshold. The controller watches for a specified number of consecutive hard hits and will automatically shut down operation of the plunger well to protect equipment.  If a plunger arrives that exceeds the dangerous hit threshold, the operation of the well will be stopped immediately to allow the operator to inspect the equipment before continuing.

ETC is also working with a number of operators to refine a predictive maintenance model for spring wear.  This model takes the cumulative kinetic energy of each plunger arrival and uses it to predict when a spring will fail.  The goal of this technology is to reduce the number of physical inspections, while reducing the amount of premature replacements.  Currently, most operators either replace their springs on a schedule, causing issues when springs fail early, but also replacing springs that may last for longer periods of time. Many other operators simply run their springs to failure, leaving the opportunity for catastrophic failures that could be easily prevented.

For more information on API 11 PL, please contact ETC. To learn how ETC uses velocity for safety and maintenance in plunger lift, click here. For information on our new Plunger Velocity Diagnostic Kit, click here.

The post Using Kinetic Energy for Plunger Lift Safety and Maintenance appeared first on Extreme Telematics Corp..