Jaxon Caines, technology reporter, Hart Energy: I’m Jaxon Caines, and this is your Tech Trends with Hart Energy Live. I'm here at SPE's Hydraulic Fracturing Technology Conference with Patrick McKeever of Oil States to talk about their Active Hub Platform. So can you tell me a little bit about you guys' platform?

Patrick McKeever, business development manager, Oil States: The Active Hub is a platform that we've developed to host our digitized assets. Over time, we've continuously improved on what assets that we had from a conventional fleet into a more digital approach. 

PM: And so currently we're hosting our ActiveLatch, which is our solution to a traditional hydraulically actuated latch. It's battery-powered instead of being hydraulically-powered. And so obviously some of the benefits you get from that is the ability to not have hydraulic hoses running up to the latching process, which eliminates that point of failure. But on top of that, it gives the ability to have that remote operation through our Active Hub. And so we have a 75 yard distance that we can work away from the red zone, keeping our people out of that process. So kind of removing that human intervention. 

We're also coming out with an ActiveClose unit, that takes the place of a traditional accumulator or closing unit that's seen on location. What that kind of does is about the same essence of what we're doing with our ActiveLatch; we're able to remove the personnel away from that process and add automation functions into the opening and closing of the valves. 

In that process is also an ActiveSense. And so the ActiveSense is the ability to visualize the open and closed function. Instead of having that binary relationship between what you see on screen with the open or closed orientation of the valve, I can see 0% to 100% that allows for me to have a better idea of what's going on, allows me to have more automated function that goes into what I'm doing, when I'm doing it and at the speed in which it's done.

JC: And that has been your Tech Trends with Hart Energy live. Find out more about the technology drilling into the oil patch at hartenergy.com/ep.