SGN, the Gas Network Operator for Scotland has reached a new milestone in hydrogen readiness through their £29.9mn LTS Futures Project.
The Local Transmission System or LTS is the c.12,000km network of high pressure gas pipelines which transport natural gas between distribution zones across Great Britain.
The LTS Futures project is a feasibility study, identifying how these pipelines would cope with general maintenance tasks, whilst transporting hydrogen compared to natural gas.
To that end, SGN constructed a 30km representative pipeline outside Edinburgh. Two new connections where then added to this pipeline whilst in active service, to test how a hydrogen pipeline would cope with both flow stopping and hot works, where welding and drilling take place in a live pipeline.
This was a UK first, with both engineering tasks proving successful, showing that high pressure hydrogen pipelines can be worked on safely.
The successful project shows that hydrogen is a viable option in the UK, with the ability to transport large volumes of renewable, green energy across the UK, to homes and businesses.
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