Case Study
Utonomy’s smart gas solution helps SGN reduce pressure, leakage and costs in Henley-on-Thames
SGN is one of the UK’s leading gas distribution companies, responsible for maintaining and upgrading gas networks in areas across Scotland and the south of England. Included in its southern network is the 12,000-population town of Henley-on-Thames, in Oxfordshire, which has a gas network of 76 km, supplying 5,655 customers.
The Challenge
Pressure in the network is controlled by six district governors. Historically, these governors were fitted with clocking equipment which reduced the pressure in the network during the night. However, these devices have become obsolete and are no longer supported by the manufacturer. Therefore, when the existing clocks failed in Henley, replacements were not readily available and SGN had to move to a fixed/seasonal pressure regime.
As the Henley network still contains some metallic pipe, SGN felt it was important to maintain the ASP (average system pressure) as low as possible, whilst maintaining security of supply, to minimise leakage.
The solution
SGN therefore took the decision to install the UtonomyOne solution. As it is a relatively small network, SGN needed to ensure that a low-cost solution could be found in order to minimise the cost to consumers and therefore selected the stand-alone version of UtonomyOne. This version does not have remote communications and is programmed on site during set-up. As the system is modular, remote communications can be added at a later date.
Installation and commissioning of the system took less than half a day. During setup, the UtonomyOne system was programmed with four different seasonal schedules. These schedules are applied automatically on the dates selected.
The results
The installation of UtonomyOne has resulted in a reduction of 2.12mbar in average operating pressures across the network – a reduction of 7.3%. This equates to a total leakage reduction across a relatively small network of 0.03 GWh (when compared to fixed seasonal network pressures), equivalent to 37 tonnes CO2e per annum.
In addition, there is a labour saving as engineers are no longer required to visit the six governor stations four times per year to manual change seasonal settings.