Advanced encroachment technology may reduce pipeline damage
SAN FRANCISCO—Whether it is caused by careless street maintenance, a construction crew or simply an overzealous homeowner with a backhoe, excavation damage is one of the leading causes of gas pipeline damage.
A new joint project of Pacific Gas & Electric and the California Energy Commission may hold one key to reducing the risk of third-party damage to gas pipelines: an excavation encroachment notification system, or EEN. Developed by the Gas Technology Institute, the system leverages technology and cloud-computing platforms to process, manage and store data designed to warn excavators of potentially unsafe activity.
The EEN system is still in the testing phase. However, those tests have been promising.
To measure the system’s responsiveness, 150 devices with cellular connectivity, GPS and motion sensors were installed on the kind of construction equipment likely to work near underground gas pipelines. Using machine-learning algorithms, the construction equipment was tracked and its activity chronicled in real time. Researchers were able to accurately assess excavation activity and then use the collected data to fine-tune the system.
Once implemented in the field, encroaching equipment will trigger an alarm and an indication to the equipment operator that there is a gas main in the vicinity. In addition, the utility stakeholder will have access to the real-time activity of excavation and construction equipment within the utility’s service territory. Historical data will be archived for analysis and trend identification.
The core technology involved has been under development at GTI for over 10 years. “In 2013, GTI began developing an Android application to run on Android-powered smartphones,” GTI GIS Manager Robert Marros told American Gas. “As the technology progressed, GTI upgraded the hardware to be a standalone device purpose-built for transmitting location and motion information to the cloud-computing environment for processing in real-time. EEN takes that technology to the next level, greatly reducing the risk of property damage and improving overall safety.”