Intelligent gas grid control

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Methane leakage from gas distribution networks is a serious financial and environmental issue.• Methane's impact on global warming is 84 times greater than CO2(1)• Gas lost globally is estimated at 300,000 GWh or £16 billion p.a.• The impact on global warming is equivalent to 1,700 million tonnes of CO2e which is more than 4 times total UK CO2e emissions.Other than replacing pipes, which has a massive capital cost, the only means of reducing leakage is through improved management of the pressures in the network. By reducing the average pressure in the pipes, methane leakage can be reduced. This is because the leakage is proportional to pressure e.g. a 15% pressure reduction results in 15% less leakage.Existing pressure management technology is out of date, expensive, time-consuming to install and requires continuous manual intervention.Utonomy is developing a solution that enables gas distribution networks (GDNs) to remotely adjust pressures in their network or to control pressures based on time of day. A key part of this solution is an innovative actuator that can be retrofitted to the thousands of gas governors feeding the network. This solution will shortly be trialled with one of the larger GDNs.While the current Utonomy solution already provides benefits in terms of lower operating costs and lower leakage, a further significant improvement could be achieved by using a more sophisticated control solution. The purpose of this project is to develop software, which uses self-learning algorithms and statistical methods to forecast the demand in the network and to calculate the optimum settings of all the governors at any point in time. The software would enable the pressure in the network to be continuously and automatically controlled so that it is as low as possible without going below the minimum. Utonomy proved the viability of this approach during a very successful Innovate UK proof of concept project carried out in 2016.Over 20yrs IPCC Fifth Assessment Chapter 8 table 8.7