Planning natural gas networks and storage in emerging countries – an application to Brazil

Abstract

Some emerging countries, such as Brazil, have large remaining natural gas resources but relatively poor infrastructure to monetize it. When most of the natural gas extraction derives from associated gas, this results in high reinjection rates in production fields combined with fuel imports also to deal with an increasingly variable demand. This study test the hypothesis that modeling the natural gas transportation network expansion with Underground gas Storage (UGS) is crucial, as UGS can reduce transportation costs by better fitting natural gas supply and demand. Without UGS chances are that network expansion will be based in oversized pipelines, or pipelines often challenged by peaking demands. Therefore, this study emulated a real natural gas transport network in a thermo-hydraulic model, aiming at diagnosing its bottlenecks mainly caused by demand intermittency, and pointing out infrastructure solutions. Findings indicated the design of UGS associated with new pipelines as a problem-solver for network bottlenecks, under a least-cost approach. This option reduced idleness and lowered gas transmission costs by 60%. In addition, it increased the network operation reliability and created a virtuous cycle, where a better planning reduces the gas tariffs and spur infrastructure expansion by raising the fuel competitiveness.

Natural Gas Power Plants in the System Security Role—The Situation and Solutions in Brazil

“…For the entire system, the impact occurs in the reduction of total operation cost and DOI: 10.4236/epe.2024.164008 156 Energy and Power Engineering in the level of storage of the reservoirs, which directly affects the risk of restriction of supply or risk of rationing. An increase in the offer in the system always reduces the average cost of operation and contributes to the recovery of the hydroelectric reservoirs [45] [46] [47] [48] [49]. In turn, the benefits and costs of direct impact to consumers are perceived through (i) the reduction of dispatch costs of thermal plants out of order of merit that is allocated to the consumer through the system service charges, and (ii) the cost of exposure of the generation scalator factor (GSF) allocated to contracts with hydro plants and the cost of contracts with thermal plants (the costs of thermoelectric generation when hydro generation is incapable of satisfying the demand) [50] [51] [52] [53] [54].…”