We’re exploring the use of hydrogen as a greener alternative to natural gas, with the ambition to transition our network to carry hydrogen and varying hydrogen blends.

For safety reasons, we use specialist gas sensor technology to monitor the concentration of flammable gases present. These sensors will issue an alert when the levels are close to being potentially dangerous.

Gas sensors currently in use across our network are only capable of detecting the quantity of natural gas. As we transition our network, we need sensors that can detect varying blends of natural gas and hydrogen.

We’re running a project to test Nevada Nano’s Molecular Property Spectrometer (MPS) multi-gas sensor, which should be able to simultaneously analyse mixes of hydrogen and natural gas with a single calibration, enabling us to locate and quantify fugitive emissions.

The sensor will be used at an existing operational site to see how it performs in our current site environment and tested with hydrogen at the FutureGrid test facility.