The project will test the feasibility, design and ultimately build metering installations attached to the hydrogen test facilities at Spadeadam(Futuregrid/H21) and will replicate metering systems across the whole gas transportation system through to industrial metering installations. The facility will;
- Provide valuable data on the compatibility of existing metering installations and ancillary equipment under hydrogen
- Support determination of repurposing costs
- Answer gas equation fundamentals
- Be a test facility for new innovative technology
This will provide consumers and networks assurance that data critical to their businesses will be accurate, supporting the transition to net zero at the lowest cost to society.
This project will bring together a number of industry experts:
National Grid Gas; Metering, with an extensive background and experience in metering across a large number of industrial users, for design, build and operation, will lead on the project working closely with representatives from
Gas Transmission, including John Wilson, Gas Metering manager -- who brings a wealth of metering knowledge from the last 30 years and was involved in the original metering requirements for the gas industry. Both will provide repurposed assets where appropriate for the build of the test facility.
Northern Gas Networks will provide key stakeholder requirements of metering needs from a distribution perspective as well as specification requirements for tying into the H21 facility.
DNV as an independent technical specialist and who oversee the Spadeadam site will bring expertise across a wide range of areas including, safety assessments, feasibility studies, build, design etc and will provide strong support across all stages of the project.
IGEM will provide expertise in industry standards that all the networks and wider equipment providers use to ensure safety and performance of assets, including metering installations. These standards will be assessed and tested through the project, enabling specification and standards to be amended to ensure hydrogen compatibility.
Each partner has been selected as they have a deep understanding of metering processes across the whole gas transportation chain as well as the capability to support feasibility, design, build and operate requirements.
This facility will specifically look at metering applications used by UK network operators and critical industrial and commercial users in a way that combines end consumer and network requirements and which utilises the considerable metering expertise from the partners above. This will support delivery of the next generation of user driven digital products, services and processes spanning transmission and distribution.
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Problem Bring Solved
What is the problem that you are trying to solve?
A key part of the evidence for transitioning the gas network to hydrogen is to ensure that metering and ancillary assets (e.g. regulators etc) across the gas system can safely and accurately measure the energy, flow and volume of hydrogen transported to end consumers.
This will provide a fair and accurate hydrogen/gas transportation system which will provide vital assurance on fiscal accuracy for industrial users and network operators alike, supporting consumer uptake and our net zero future.
Metering in the Networks
Both the National Transmission System (NTS) and the Gas Distribution Networks (GDNs) rely on accurate metering under a range of operational conditions to measure the energy that enters/exits their networks. This is critical for accurate billing and physical network management. The metering that exists today is varied across the networks and uses a wide range of technologies for their applications which are built upon metering fundamentals derived for natural gas, under GS(M)R.
Hydrogen and hydrogen blends are likely to test the suitability of those assumptions as well as the suitability of the various metering technologies employed today.
Metering to the Consumer
In the UK there are c890k industrial and commercial metering installations that provide vital last mile services, connecting consumers to the UK gas networks. Usage in this context represents 17% of UK carbon emissions. These installations meter gas to high levels of accuracy whilst also delivering the required pressure and temperature for consumers. Large variances in technologies are used to meter gas usage and factors such as the complexity of installations, pressure, size, and consumer requirements will need assessment under hydrogen to support a gas grid transition.
The Opportunity
There is an opportunity to close a gap in the current hydrogen trials to; test the feasibility, design, build, commission and operate transmission, distribution and industrial metering installations with hydrogen under real world operational conditions at the Futuregrid and H21 facility at Spadeadam. This will provide vital cost and safety data on metering assets and ancillary equipment under hydrogen scenarios. This future metering facility will provide cost data on the repurposing of existing network and last mile metering for hydrogen in a whole system context and will test new technology to enable new innovate digital technologies.
This will answer a key part of the evidence to demonstrate hydrogen is safe and cost effective for use in the existing gas system and that hydrogen can be metered accurately and robustly.
Impacts and benefits
POTENTIAL NET BENEFITS
Hydrogen is a key tool in the reduction of carbon emissions in industry and potentially in heat. Providing assurance that hydrogen and hydrogen blends can be measured correctly and that networks can operate effectively as well as bills being accurate is critical to ensuring consumer demand and support for a transition to hydrogen fuels.
This project will holistically look at the metering system and new technology across the whole gas transportation system to ensure solutions are in place to measure hydrogen accurately and cost effectively.
There is currently a knowledge gap in the industry when considering the accuracy and performance of high-pressure network energy management or industrial and commercial consumer metering when running with hydrogen/hydrogen blends. This project will close the industry gap and provide a robust understanding of how metering will work on a hydrogen network.
The industry standard review has already identified the need to run technical studies on certain natural gas standards to enable them to be safely run-on hydrogen/hydrogen blends. The project will close some of these gaps as well as developing a new repurposing standard. The standard developments will be fed into IGEM and disseminated to the industry.
The project will look at the costs of repurposing in-situ assets, making a cost saving estimate to industry rather than having to replace all metering assets.
The optimum solution for various metering use cases will be selected from new and current technology to ensure that installations are viable, reliable and resilient cost effective and meet consumers outputs.
As limited large scale hydrogen pressure and flow facilities exist, the project will issue a call for support from meter manufacturers to enable testing of new technology on the proposed metering installation/facility and supporting manufacturers in product development.
PROJECT CHANGES
No changes were made to the original project scope and intent; however, a desired outcome was to determine high level costing for the facility that the project proposes to build. This was an ambitious target and unfortunately due to time constraints the project could not determine high level costings to a reasonable degree of confidence therefore costings have not been included in final project outcome. This will be addressed in the alpha phase.
