Deploying Digital Assets: Natural Gas Utilities Using Smart Grid Technologies to Modernize Infrastructure

Abstract

Grid modernization is a critical component in transforming today's electric, gas, and water utilities to meet the growing expectations of regulators and customers. Grid modernization is the integration and use of connected devices from the customer premises to the rest of the transmission and distribution networks. The connected devices are the meters, monitoring equipment, and controllers that allow utility employees to remotely access data and operate the network. These devices are the backbone that enables electric utilities to improve reliability, maximize operational efficiencies, and accommodate the increasing proliferation of distributed renewable generation and changing loads throughout the system. Natural gas utilities are beginning to experience the same evolution electric utilities have been going through for the past two decades, but many are now well positioned to leverage lessons learned from their electric counterparts to execute some other, and perhaps less controversial, infrastructure‐modernization plans.