Load Management in the GIS
Where are the Problems?
Load management has always been an issue for the gas industry. The main concepts and goals mentioned in the previous section have not changed. What has changed is the technology available and the makeup of the industry. Many times, utilities do not realize that problems exist with their methods until something goes wrong or they see something better than what they already have. In an effort to avoid the former and take advantage of the latter, we must first take a look at several common problems that exist in many utilities.
Load management in most utilities will be spread across three or more departments, each working toward specific department goals. For example, the operations department is tasked with running the natural gas system on a daily basis. Their main goal is shortterm; to make sure every customer receives the gas they need on a daily basis. Planning departments, however, are responsible for preparing the system to operate in the long term. They need to design new facilities or replace existing facilities to ensure that the operations department has the infrastructure needed to safely and reliably serve all customers. Meanwhile, the marketing department wants to grow the network by signing up new customers or expanding service to existing customers.
All three departments play a major role in load management, and each one relies heavily on the others to execute that role effectively. The marketing department needs to know where the utility’s pipeline is over-committed or where extra capacity exists. The last thing a marketer wants to do is to spend time trying to sign up new customers in areas where there is no capacity in the line. Since the planning department has the ultimate say on signing up new accounts, customers located in areas with limited pipeline capacity will probably not gain approval. On the other hand, the planning department needs to know what areas the marketers are targeting. Marketing departments typically have demographic/census data that clearly states what parts of the city are growing or where future expansion projects are going to occur. Marketers will target these areas for their sales effort. If system planners had the same data, they would be better prepared for growth to occur in those areas and upgrade the infrastructure
accordingly.
In many utilities, the data mentioned above is readily available to anyone that wishes to access the information. The problem is that different users and departments maintain different pieces of the information. The planning department will typically determine pipeline capacities and infrastructure needs through hydraulic modeling. The hydraulic model is contained in a software package that the planning department thoroughly understands, but that is often confusing and frustrating for most marketers to access. The marketers may be looking for one small piece of information, but to find it they have to sort through a significant amount of additional data in the model that they do not need. Likewise, the marketing department typically has their own software applications and data storage that is unfamiliar to most system planners. Planners have access to the data, but similar to the marketers, they have trouble locating the information they need. As a result, the departments pass most information by paper or
word of mouth—a process that can be slow, cumbersome, and unreliable.
For most new commercial or industrial loads, the marketer must seek approval from system planning before the customer is hooked up for service. The approval simply states that the pipeline capacity is available or can become available to service that new load, but the approval process can be slow and frustrating to complete.
