Introduction: Cadent have a license obligation to maintain pressures to the ECV of a property.

Design minimum pressure for low pressure systems shall be no lower than:
-19mbar for systems designed pre January 1996
-20.75 mbar for systems designed post December 1995

Low gas pressures are evident when the gas supply to a customer’s property fails to meet the minimum pressure required to keep their appliances functioning correctly. There are numerous causes for low pressure and the impact of low pressures often results in a customer’s gas supply being interrupted until a resolution has been identified and resolved.

It is important to minimize the length of an interruption to our customers by identifying a solution that can be installed promptly with minimal disruption and allow the work to resolve the root cause of the poor pressure to be as a planned event rather than unplanned.

Under certain situations, ServiBoost can provide a temporary solution to instantaneous pressure drops and so reduce emergency ‘no gas’ situations. Cadent estimate that in the last financial year 3,500 recorded instances of poor pressure would present the opportunity to fit a Serviboost unit. This then allows planning and scheduling time to re-configure the service at the customer’s convenience.
In order to address these poor pressure problems, Cadent has worked with Synthotech on two previous phases to develop the ServiBoost unit as detailed below :

ServiBoost Phase 1, completed under NIA-NGG0057 (commenced October 2015) successfully delivering:
• Feasibility Study of the proposed system including construction of a simple simulation rig.
• Design, Development and Manufacture of a working prototype
• Testing and data capture of how the booster performs on a simulated rig.

ServiBoost Phase 2, completed under NIA-NGGD-0098 (commenced May 2017), successfully delivering :
• Design and Development of a working prototype (pre-commercialised)
• Manufacture of fully functioning Serviboost units to permit field trials to be undertaken
• Determine Installation challenges
• Undertake trials – Laboratory, Simulated and ‘Live’ Trials
• Development of data folders to provide a flight plan for commercialisation
• Data collection – Performance, Efficiency, Function of the Installed Serviboost Unit

Objectives:
The objectives of this third and final phase of the project are :-

• Build and test the final version of the ServiBoost units
• Complete the ATEX testing and certification of the units
• High temperature testing and reporting