To support the energy transition, National Gas are looking to repurpose the National Transmission System (NTS) to hydrogen. National Gas currently use a suite of policies and procedures, both internal and external, to safely operate the natural gas network. As hydrogen has different properties to natural gas, these policies and procedures will need to be updated to enable hydrogen to be transported safely in the NTS.
This project will review internal policies and procedures and identify what evidence is required to update them for operating a hydrogen transmission system. Where there are gaps in the evidence, a test programme will be developed to carry out gather the physical evidence required to update the policies and procedures.
Benefits
Current operational methodologies employed on the network today will not all be suitable for hydrogen networks. The benefits of the project will be the identification of evidence gaps required to update operational policies and procedures for hydrogen. This will then feed into a testing programme which will gather the physical evidence to facilitate the required updates and allow hydrogen networks to be operated on safely and efficiently.
Learnings
Outcomes
Value tracking Data Point Data Point Definition
Maturity TRL0-1 The project has performed a gap analysis based on existing operational procedures, and future work has been identified to fill these gaps.
Opportunity 100% and multiple asset classes NGT document library applies to all elements of the network, it's operation and maintenance.
Deployment costs - No solution is being developed to be deployed.
Innovation cost £841,312 Cost of document reviews, workshops, gap analysis and test plan development.
Financial Saving - No financial savings are expected as a result of this project.
Safety - No direct safety improvements are expected as a result of this project, although the gaps identified will lead to further research and testing to develop safe hydrogen operating procedures.
Environment - No direct emissions savings but the project will support the transition to hydrogen.
Compliance Ensures compliance Updating the policies and procedures ensures compliance with safety regulation and legislation etc.
Skills & Competencies Departmental The project findings will affect the innovation and Asset Engineering teams.
Future proof Supports business strategy Findings will support the transition to hydrogen
This project has conducted an in-depth review of National Gas’ Policies, Management Procedures, Work Procedures, Maintenance Procedures and Specifications and identified gaps in evidence for hydrogen. This activity has highlighted gaps which have not previously been identified or covered by innovation projects. The outcome is a comprehensive list of actions which consist of research projects, OEM engagements, business decisions to be made, and physical testing required. The project also highlighted potential methane updates which could be made to existing documents, as well as redundant and outdated documents which are no longer required for methane transmission operations.
Lessons Learnt
The project reviewed a large number of documents from NGT’s policy suite, which came with challenges in assigning resource to reviews and subsequent workshops. The project established a process for the reviews early on and this was agreed with Subject Matter Experts from NGT and DNV.
There were also challenges in specific documents both in terms of relevance and ownership. Due to the large number of documents in NGT’s policy suite, it was found that a number of documents are now withdrawn or no longer relevant to NTS operation. These documents had to be removed as they were picked up by the project team. Each document has an Owner Assigned within NGT, however the list of Owners was found to be outdated, with some personnel having left the business. Additionally, it was found that document owners were not necessarily the Subject Matter Expert for that document. The appropriate SMEs were identified early in the project to ensure no delays later down the line.
A number of key themes were repeated across many documents, specifically the Safe Setting to Work and Safety and Technical Competencies (STC) which will require updating for hydrogen operations. This led to some repetition between reviews and workshops. This could have been improved by marking these instances as previously covered by other workshops/actions
