Gas Shortage Research Articles

Power stations 'should get gas first'

Will the lights stay on in England and Wales this winter? National Grid Transco (NGT) expects so, but says the safety margin between generating capacity and projected demand is too small for comfort. In a report to the energy regulator, Ofgem, the company calls for new measures to make sure that gas-fired power stations get priority supplies if a gas shortage coincides with peak electricity demand. The author discusses whether the measures will be enough to avoid shortages.

SEIA proposes four steps to ease energy shortfall

According to new analysis by the Washington, DC-based Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), clean, renewable solar power could replace nearly a third of the natural gas shortage in 2005 — if the US government takes steps this year to promote solar expansion. This is a short news story only. Visit www.re-focus.net for the latest renewable energy industry news

Marriage and Divorce in America

In John Updike's story of marital breakup, Separating, daughter, Judith Maples, home after a junior year in England contrasts American mode of responding to gas shortage (the OPEC embargo) with how English responded to electricity workers' strike: It was so sweet . . . during worst of it, how all butchers and bakery shops kept open by candlelight.... From papers, things sounded so much worse here: people shooting people in gas lines, and everybody freezing (197). This has everything to do with Maples' which Updike contextualizes as a national question, implicating American individualism and social irresponsibility. Is this a stretch? It's not, according to five books under review. But is divorce a departure from traditional American values or an instance of them? The American right wing sees it as a catastrophic departure that threatens fabric of American moral identity: [O]bservance of Christian model monogamy was made to stand for customary boundaries in society, morality and civilization; nation's public backing of conventional became a synecdoche for everything valued in American way of life (Cott 219). This is not new. The nineteenth-century novels of courtship Karen Tracey studies focus on female characteristics are most apt to contribute to happiness of individual, to solidity of middle class family, and to strength of a nation (14). But does happiness curl up comfortably with solidity and, if not, which should one choose? Norma Basch shows how Victorian American moralists championed what they believed to be the self-sacrificing communitarianism of against selfish individualism of divorce, thereby translating the divorce question into a symbolic focal point for competing worldviews (188). Thus marriage was (and is) a metonym for social order (3).

Fusion: Power for the future

There is a growing recognition that we need an alternative to conventional fossil fuels. Shortages of oil and gas have the potential to cause economic and political instability, and burning fossil fuels can cause environmental damage, as well as being the likeliest cause of global warming. Fusion - the process that powers the sun and stars, has the potential to provide large-scale, safe energy production, without adding to global warming andwithout the long-term radioactive waste associated with conventional fission power stations. More importantly, within the next 20 years large-scale fusion power production is planned to be demonstrated by the multinational experiment ITER, and a proposed `fast track' to fusion envisages a time-scale of roughly 30 years for a prototype power plant PROTO to be built.

US lessons for energy industry restructuring: based on natural gas and California electricity incidences

During the regulation and deregulation processes, the US experienced, besides temporary price spikes, several unhappy incidences; natural gas shortage in mid-1970s, gas bubble in 1980s, California power crisis, and high natural gas price in 2000–2001. This paper focuses on the US natural gas and California electricity industries, especially on the above-mentioned four incidences. Through analyzing their causes and effects, this paper tries to deduce some lessons, which would be helpful to prevent and/or overcome other probable incidences in the US as well as in other countries in a process of deregulation or planning to introduce competition in their energy industries. Main lessons deduced are encouragement of investment, minimization of political consideration, transmission of price signal to all the market players, outlet for any market interference, diversification of trading options, and minimum ambiguity on responsibility between regulators as well as watching on general market situation and correcting its flaws in timely manner.

The Case of Turkmenistan's Natural Gas Export

The Trans-Caspi-gas-Pipeline project, started in February 1999 with the strong support of the U.S., must have enabled its political purpose of reducing the Russian controlling power to the area, and Turkmenistan to secure the gas export route to far abroad. However, the project was deadlocked by Turkmenistan's resuming gas export to Russia via the existing route in 2000. As a reason of Turkmenistan's conversion, it is possible that Turkmenistan could expect Russia to relax the conditions for using the existing route with two factors: recent natural gas shortage in Russia, and its desire to revive political influence to the region. However, expansion of the gas export, through Russia exactly means continuation of Turkmenistan's dependence to it, so it is not regarded as strategically rational. Thus, since Turkmenistan, the country of prediction impossibility, is the main exporter of the area, the future of the natural gas export from the Caspian Sea to the world market is quite opaque.

Gas shortage preventive circuit for a fuel cell power generation system

A gas shortage preventive circuit for use in a fuel cell power generation circuit that includes a fuel cell, an inverter, and a constant voltage controlling circuit. The gas shortage preventive unit cooperates with an overcurrent limiting unit. The gas shortage preventive unit has an allowable overcurrent value calculating portion which calculates an allowable overcurrent value based on a fuel utilization coefficient which is higher by a certain proportion higher than a standard value and the output current of the fuel cell. The gas shortage preventive unit also has a response speed controlling portion which eliminates transient variations from the allowable overcurrent value and outputs an overcurrent value signal. The overcurrent limiting unit outputs to the constant volume controlling circuit a signal for suppressing an overcurrent when the output current of the fuel cell exceeds the preset overcurrent value.

The Evolution of Energy Modeling at the Federal Energy Administration and the Energy Information Administration

Energy modeling at the Energy Information Administration started with the Project Independence Evaluation System in 1974 and moved to the Intermediate Future Forecasting System in 1983, which was replaced by the National Energy Modeling System in 1993. The models were shaped by the forces affecting energy markets and by policy concerns. These forces included changing world markets for oil, shortages of natural gas, and environmental concerns. The models have been used to analyze legislative proposals, and these analyses have met with a variety of reactions that ranged from extreme gratitude to rage. Working as policy analysts when energy issues were at the center of national attention was exciting, exhausting, rewarding, and at times dismaying.

95/00296 New Zealand faces gas shortage

95/00296 New Zealand faces gas shortage

Emergency Government Interventions: Case Study of Natural Gas Shortages

We present a framework, decision models, and supporting methods to improve government's decisions on a class of intervention problems. The example used is on natural gas shortages. We provide three decision models that move progressively from regulated market mechanisms as a means of gas allocation to nonprice-based directives as shortages become more serious. A critical aspect of this framework is government's timing in switching decision models and changing levels of decision variables. We provide new results on chance constraints that enable time series forecasting as the basis for triggering intervention decisions. In particular, we show that the forecasted regression quantile function for the underlying stochastic process of a chance constraint is the deterministic equivalent for the constraint. Lastly, we evaluate some government decisions on the 1976/77 natural gas shortage in Ohio by applying our methods in a simulation of the conditions of that time. One finding is that some of the emergency actions taken were probably unnecessary.

An acoustic study of Japanese coronal fricative clusters resulting from vowel devoicing

Earlier studies [S. Shattuck‐Hufnagel, V. Zue, and J. Bernstein, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Suppl. 1 64, S92 (1978), V. Zue and S. Shattuck‐Hufnagel, Proc. 9th ICPS 2, 215 (1979)] examining English fricative clusters [s∫] and [∫s] across word boundaries (e.g., in “gas shortage” and “tunafish sandwich”) showed that the direction of assimilatory palatalization is predominantly anticipatory: [s∫] often becomes [∫∫], but [∫s] does not. This study investigates the cross‐linguistic validity of such a tendency. Four speakers of standard Japanese casually spoke sentences containing fricative clusters [∫s] and [s∫] resulting from devoicing/deletion of an intervening high vowel [i] or [u]. Preliminary observations reveal complex patterns not totally consistent with those for English: anticipatory palatalization in [s∫] in Japanese does not seem as robust a process as in English. Furthermore, perseveratory palatalization, i.e., ∫s→∫∫, and both anticipatory and perseveratory depalatalization, i.e., ∫s→ss, s∫→ss, all of which are relatively rare in English, are found in Japanese data. The results suggest a diffculty in explaining the previous English data in terms of peripheral articulatory control.

Managing energy emergencies

In the past few years the United States has experienced several emergencies due to energy shortages, and more loom in the future. This paper presents a model for studying energy emergencies and applies the model in a framework to analyze a natural gas shortage in New England. The framework assesses events initiating emergencies, supply/demand disruptions, social and economic impacts, characteristics of emergencies, and societal responses. In concluding, the paper suggests how we can become better managers of potential energy emergency situations.

Recreational Travel: Gasoline Shortages and Price Increases

An empirical study utilizes visitation data from a number of recreational attractions in California to estimate the reduction of travel due to the gasoline price increases that occurred during 1977-79 and the gas shortages that occurred in 1979. Differences in the price elasticities and the impacts of the gas shortage are determined by comparing private and public recreation sites, located in both urban and rural areas. It is shown that local zoos suffer the greatest long term visitation reduction due to increased gas prices, and that recreation attractions that draw from the national tourism market are least affected by gas prices. However, national attractions are the most affected by a gas shortage. It is recommended that public officials should consider mass transit for providing mobility to low cost local recreation areas and plan for possible mitigation of adverse local economic consequences if major recreational attractions are affected by future fuel shortages.

A chance-constrained programming approach to natural gas curtailment decisions

This paper presents a modeling methodology for the determination of optimal curtailment decisions by a gas distribution utility during a chronic gas shortage situation. Based on the end-use priority approach, a linear programming model is formulated, that reallocates the available gas supply among the utility's customers while minimizing fuel switching, unemployment, and utility operating costs. This model is then transformed into a chance-constrained program in order to account for the weather-related variability of the gas requirements. The methodology is applied to the East Ohio Gas Company.

A Natural Gas Flow Model under Uncertainty in Demand

Storage and purchasing policies that minimize expected shortages of natural gas in the service area supplied by a single natural gas utility are developed. The problem is formulated and solved using a multiperiod linear programming model. The model takes into consideration the variability of weather conditions and its effects on the demand for natural gas. Forecasts of future weather conditions are updated several times during the model planning period. Also, the optimal flows of natural gas are determined at the time that the forecasts are updated. The optimal storage quantities at the beginning of each time period and the consequences of contracting for additional storage facilities on the natural gas shortage are derived by using the model. The natural gas planning strategy is to plan natural gas flows based on forecasted future demand. The optimal flows should be recalculated for future time periods at several computational stages of the model, honoring the orders placed during previous time periods.

Indices of energy consumption: An exploratory analysis of a utility's monthly billing data

Simple weather-sensitive models are derived and applied to monthly energy billing data for a large utility region in New Jersey. Natural gas demand in the residential sector is explored in depth, and the method is applied to other gas and electricity sectors. The results are related to an earlier empirical study of single-family residences. Our findings and hypotheses fall into two classes, those which are specific to the utility's customers and those which pertain to utility data in general. As for the specific utility's residential gas customers, the findings suggest that they reduced their use of gas during the oil embargo of 1973–1974 and the New Jersey natural gas shortage of 1976–1977, and, most likely, the consumption reduction was due to lowered thermostats and reduced use of appliances rather than to retrofitting of dwellings. The more general findings are that utility data can be very valuable for monitoring changes in consumption patterns, and that there is a potential for extracting consumption indices from the data; these indices would not only signal whether consumption patterns are changing but also why. The first of our conclusions needs to be examined for other sample data sets and other regions. The second, our most important hypothesis, merits systematic investigation.

Palatalization of /s/ in American English: when is a /š/ not a /š/?

Acoustic measurement show that when /s/ or /z/ are followed by the palatal fricative /š/, they are often produced as /š/ or /ž/ in casual speech, even when the palatal segment is on the other side of a word boundary. Thus “gas shortage” can be rendered [gæššɔrɾəǰ]. A similar phenomenon might be expected in a different palatalizing environment, when word‐final /s/ or /z/ are followed by the palatal glide /y/, as in “miss you” or “use your”. From the same corpus and using the same measurement procedures reported earlier [S. Shattuck‐Hufnagel, V. W. Zue, and J. Bernstein, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 64, S92(A) (1978)], we examined the acoustic consequences of this second palatalization process. Our measurements suggest that: (a) palatalization of word‐final /s, z/ preceding a /y/ occurs quite frequently; (b) when such palatalization occurs, it results in acoustic characteristics which are uniform across the entire segment, with no residual alveolar fricative; and (c) for some speakers, the palatalization process results in acoustic properties significantly different from /š/ suggesting an articulatory target somewhere between the /s/ and /š/ in American English. [Work supported by N1NCDS.]

Rural Employment and Rural‐Urban Population Shifts: Discussion

The three papers in this series focus on why we have had a shift in population growth or rural turnaround. The Hoch paper suggests that the movement of people into areas is a rational choice based on economic criteria, even though the rationality may not be readily apparent. The Dillman paper indicates that individuals' nonmonetarily motivated residential location preferences are a very important force in settlement patterns. These preferences may be contradictory to prevailing economic signals. The Edwards paper discusses our conceptual tool-kits to understand and analyze these types of trends, and the obstacles to testing empirically these conceptual ideas. The papers fail to address what effect the gas shortage and gas prices will have on the marginal in-migrant. How strong is the desire to live in a bucolic setting? How many people remaining in metro areas are going to move to adjacent areas or even nearby exurban developments? They did not move before under more favorable conditions. With

Radiation cured coatings - Some commercial successes

I have been asked by the organizers to discuss some commercially successful applications of radiation cured coatings with reference to both technical and commercial factors. This paper will cover three such applications, Case A in the graphic arts field, Case B in vacuum metallizing and Case C in a specialist electrical end use. In each of the three cases to be considered, there were different economic and technical arguments for use of radiation cured coatings. In all three cases, the general advantages of radiation cured coatings, such as no solvent emission, low energy usage and high operating speeds were considered to be important factors, and, as such, will be dealt with in this paper. However, each case had unique problems to which radiation technology presented equally unique solutions. These solutions, and the ways in which they differ from those offered by conventional solvent or water based coatings, will be considered in detail in this paper. During the last five years, industry in general has searched for technologies which would enable it to reduce or eliminate its dependence on organic solvents and which would also be less wasteful of energy. This search was allotted high priority after the 1973 oil embargo and the rapid increase in solvent prices which resulted. Since reduction in the use of organic solvents would also ease the problems of emission control, the recent EPA initiatives, aimed at a very big reduction in the usage of organic solvents in coatings and adhesives, have given a further impetus to this search. Finally, many of you will still have vivid memories of the natural gas shortage experienced over much of the United States during January and February of 1977 and of the problems, shutdowns and dislocations that followed. Because of the factors described above, many users of solvent based coatings have become much more interested in radiation cured coatings because these would: 1. 1) Eliminate concerns about availability of solvents, 2. 2) Reduce material inventory, 3. 3) Reduce in-plant fire hazard (and insurance premiums), 4. 4) Reduce energy usage, 5. 5) For all practical purposes, eliminate problems related to compliance with EPA emission controls. Furthermore, the use of solventless radiation cured coatings would enable the user to dispense with hot air tunnels on all new equipment. (With certain types of radiation cured coating, ventilation with large volumes of cold air is still desirable in order to reduce or eliminate residual odor.)

Simulating the Operation of ANatural Gas Distribution System With Linear Flow Models

Abstract The energy crisis has created a need for more efficient operation of every sector of the energy industry. Shortages of natural gas, federal regulations and increasing demand have imposed special hardships on natural gas distribution (NGD) companies. Management personnel and engineers are in search of economical and practical methods to simulate the operation of gas distribution 8YStem s to allow economic studies to be made of alternative operating policies. This paper presents research conducted to refine a previous attempt at simulating NGD systems with linear flow models (LFM). A new method of constructing the transaction matric of an NGD system LFM is presented. The new method allows the calculation of storage field leakage volumes and compressor fuel requirements for steady-state operation. Application of the model to an existing system is described. The validity of the model is verified through comparison of metered and predicted gas flows and pressures. A comparison of historic economic data with model-predicted data is presented to further substantiate model validity. A discussion of model uses is presented, including an example compressor fuel reduction problem. A general compressor fuel minimization procedure is proposed. Introduction THE BELATED RECOGNITION of an "energy crisis" throughout the world has focused attention on the energy production and transportation industry. Efficient operation of every sector of the energy industry has become a necessity as a consequence of impending raw material (i.e. oil and gas in particular) shortages and cost increases. NGD companies form one sector of the energy industry which is especially aware of increased difficulties brought about by the energy crisis. Natural gas is in short supply and increased wellhead prices are inevitable. Federal regulations in the United States do not permit gas distribution companies to pass along increased costs to customers without lengthy and costly court hearings before the Federal Power Commission. As a result of increased operating costs and restrictive governmental regulation, gas distribution company management personnel are in search of economical and practical techniques which will enable them to simulate the operation of gas delivery systems to permit the study of alternative operating policies. Literature Review Early work on gas flow simulation concentrated on the study of steady-state flow in single line segments(1,2,3,4,5,6). In the early fifties, the study of transient flow in single lines was initiated by Olds and Sage(7). Many others have since studied transient gas flow(8,9,10,11). Stoner"" published one of the first papers on the steady-state analysis of integrated gas networks. The n-dimensional Newton-Raphson iterative procedure was used to solve the nonlinear equations which result from the problem formulation. A refinement of Stoner's work was published by Evrenos et al.(13). Transient analysis of complex pipeline systems has been studied recently by several authors(14,15,16,17) Rachford et al.(18) described a gas pipeline system transient flow model utilizing variational methods. LFM's, as described by Rosenblatt(9), were first used to describe the American economy by Leontief(20). Extensions of this original work continue today.