Yokogawa wins SSE gas storage upgrade
1 Aug 2013
Yokogawa has won a contract to supply an integrated control and safety system for SSE’s Hornsea gas storage facility in Yorkshire.
The multi-million pound contract will see Yokogawa upgrade the UK’s largest onshore underground gas storage facility, located at Atwick, East Yorkshire.
The order includes the supply and installation of Yokogawa’s Centum VP production control system to control the gas compressors, along with its ProSafe safety instrumented system (SIS).
Hornsea is second only to Centrica’s offshore Rough gas storage facility in terms of gas storage capacity in the UK, and is the largest onshore facility, capable of holding around 325 million cubic metres of gas.
The Atwick facility comprises nine man-made salt cavities that have been leached into a salt layer 1.8 km underground. Gas is imported to the site and injected into the cavities for storage. When needed, the gas is then withdrawn from the cavities, dried, and exported to the national transmission system.
Yokogawa is targeting the natural gas industry, and this project will allow us to gain further expertise in gas storage control and safety
Yokogawa Europe president Herman van den Berg
Yokogawa’s contract is part of an SSE project to extend the life of the site and allow its use for both supplying gas at times of peak demand, known as peak shaving, and longer term storage. This will be done by improving control, compression and metering through the replacement of obsolete control systems with modern, maintainable, and supportable control and safety systems.
“In Europe and North America, gas is often stored in underground facilities, and many projects for the construction and upgrade of such facilities are in the planning stage, spurred by such developments as the surge in shale gas production,” said Yokogawa Europe president Herman van den Berg.
“Yokogawa is targeting the natural gas industry, and we believe that this project will allow us to gain further expertise in gas storage control and safety applications that we intend to share with the entire Group.”
While many gas storage sites in the UK may require upgrades of their control and safety systems, there are unlikely to be many new developments. Only yesterday Centrica warned that it was likely to axe two schemes it has in development unless the government changes its position on financial support for gas storage projects.
