Quote:
Originally Posted by sendler
Will all of the local compressors and regulators continue to supply natural gas with an extended electrical outage?
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"The good news is that some of the main compressor stations, feeding the large interstate pipelines, are typically fueled by natural gas and generate their power with it, to keep operations running. Gas-fueled compressors could be more widely used throughout the system, but they are noisy and have environmental implications. So in urban areas, the gas distribution companies typically use electric pumps and compressors to bring gas to the consumer. It’s not hard to see where the problem lies here. No electricity, no gas supply.
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https://geekprepper.com/how-long-wil...t-electricity/
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I expect that each area has better/worse coverage with the natural gas driven compressors. I didn't intend to state that EVERYONE was going to continue to have natural gas feeds.
I've been out of the control system consulting world for 15 years. Things may have changed. Circa Y2K I can tell you what our local utilities did. We had people investigating what equipment would continue to run after Y2K and what equipment would not. And I'm nosy, so I asked a bunch of questions that were not directly related to Y2K.
Our electrical grid (here in Saskatchewan) has lost a lot of resiliency. We have equipment that was designed to run for 25 years and has had 2 life extension projects already ... and they are still 10 years past their replacement date. This was not in a report. I was at the stations and worked on some of the gear. Some is older than I am. Built well, maintained, but still old and everything fails eventually. Some has newer add-on, or upgraded controls on older systems .. but those systems are only as good as the engineer that did the update. Did they cover all of the bases? Or just the ones that they were TOLD about?
Our natural gas distribution is more modern. As things wear out, they get upgraded. Compressors wear, parts get hard to get, capital replaces them with larger units. The natural gas in the system ... 'in transit' to customers .. is quite large. We have a large land area, few customers, and *LOTS* of big distribution pipes. Our utility guys told me that if everything else failed on Y2K they were still good for a month, without anyone being able to get to work. It may be less now, it may be more.
Communications is resilient on failure of fiber, or individual power supplies, or a particular vendor's equipment (if all of one vendor's equipment caught a virus at the same time). Local power backup *WAS* limited ... hopefully that got upgraded in the last 15 years. Each cell tower was mandated to have 8 hours backup power. Some went in with much more since it was expected that there would be a bunch more equipment added to the tower and they still needed 8 hours runtime. The main fabric will stay up for maybe a week or 2. After that, not likely.
Your situation is not likely the same.