Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) today announced the next phase
in its ongoing plan to improve safety and reduce methane emissions from
its gas system through an expanded strategic alliance with Silicon
Valley based Picarro Inc. PG&E and Picarro Inc. will collaborate to
further optimize Picarro’s solution for integration into PG&E’s leak
management system and fleet of super-sensitive gas leak detection
vehicles, drastically improving how the utility finds and analyzes gas
leaks.
PG&E's cutting-edge leak detection vehicles. (Photo: Business Wire)
In 2012, PG&E became the first utility in the world to employ the
vehicle-mounted Picarro
Surveyor TM instruments which are
approximately 1,000 times more sensitive than traditional leak detection
equipment. Thanks to this technology, PG&E has been able to survey more
of its service area which has led to a 99 percent reduction of minor,
non-hazardous leaks on its system since 2010. With this new strategic
alliance, PG&E and Picarro Inc. will:
-
Develop revolutionary end-to-end gas leak management solutions that
will integrate results from advanced leak detection vehicles into
PG&E’s information systems enabling faster root cause analysis and
repair.
-
Establish data collection processes to support predictive analytics to
assess and mitigate risks to PG&E’s 70,000 miles of gas distribution
infrastructure.
-
Improve the precision and accuracy of quantifying the volume of
methane emissions associated with PG&E's facilities.
“The Picarro technology has transformed our ability to find and then fix
natural gas leaks on our system. We’ll build on our success and create
the next generation of leak management capabilities for the industry by
enhancing safety, improving quality, and capturing efficiencies as well
as reducing the impact on the environment,” said Nick Stavropoulos,
PG&E’s executive vice president of Gas Operations.
Currently, PG&E has six vehicles mounted with the Picarro SurveyorTM,
with plans to add four more by the end of 2015. For more than two years,
the utility has trained its workforce on the testing and eventual
deployment of the advanced leak detection vehicles across its 70,000
square mile service area. Now, the company is ready to expand the
partnership with the technology innovator to gain an even better insight
into its natural gas system.
“PG&E has led the industry in the adoption of the Picarro solution. The
partnership that we have with PG&E has enabled us to collectively
revolutionize an established process that has been in place for decades
allowing for enhanced safety while driving towards a more reliable and
affordable energy future” said Alex Balkanski, Picarro’s President and
CEO.
About Picarro.
The Picarro Surveyor for natural gas leaks, is the industry’s only leak
detection solution that surveys mains and services at normal driving
speeds to quickly identify likely leak locations and leak-free areas.
The Picarro Surveyor combines a high-precision greenhouse gas analyzer
with dedicated cloud-based processing algorithms, its secure user
interface provides a real-time view of the leak indications and survey
coverage area, generating a data-driven audit trail. Hazardous leaks can
be quickly identified, while virtually eliminating false positives. The
leak source can be identified as biogenic methane or natural gas within
minutes. The Picarro Surveyor is being used for compliance surveying, as
well as for a growing list of non-compliance applications.
About PG&E
Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E
Corporation (NYSE:PCG), is one of the largest combined natural gas
and electric utilities in the United States. Based in San Francisco,
with more than 20,000 employees, the company delivers some of the
nation’s cleanest energy to nearly 16 million people in Northern and
Central California. For more information, visit www.pge.com/
and www.pge.com/en/about/newsroom/index.page.
Photos/Multimedia Gallery Available: http://www.businesswire.com/multimedia/home/20150126006179/en/
Copyright Business Wire 2015