Enabling large-scale injection of biomethane in the european gas distribution
Gas grids have the potential to become an energy storage device for renewable energy in the form of biomethane but, at the moment, this potential is not fully exploited due to technical limitations in what are still largely manually driven grid systems. Gas grid systems are about to undergo fundamental changes, driven by the rapid growth in renewable energy production, which creates the need for a more flexible and active gas distribution system: a ""smart gas grid"", with real-time, precise monitoring and controlling of gas pressure, gas quality and the gas flow. Utonomy, a British/German SME, is developing a novel, cost-effective smart grid technology that monitors and controls gas pressure, flow & gas quality by means of cloud-based, algorithm-driven hardware that can be easily installed without the need for any changes in the gas infrastructure. Utonomy has already developed a pressure management application that helps utilities reduce gas leakage to TRL 6, with the first field pilots planned for January 2018. However, during development work and in the course of discussions with future customers, Utonomy discovered that pressure management has even more commercial potential when applied to increase the grid feed-in capacity of biomethane plants. The system provides valuable data from day 1, it has an exceptionally short payback period and the increased output enabled by the innovation could result in total CO2 mitigation of approx. 26m tonnes p.a. in the UK, France, the Netherlands and Germany. Utonomy's near-term marketing focus will be on these four countries but the technology has significant sales potential everywhere there is a gas grid. Utonomy is targeting incremental revenues of EUR 19m from this project in 2022. The focus of this Phase 1 study will be to analyse the technical adaptions required for the optimization of renewable gas injection, build a demonstrator and evaluate go-to-market and pricing options.