Operation of gas pipeline networks: How to satisfy the customer demand in 99% of all cases

What is it about?

In optimization, robustness is important, since the data are ususally not known exactly. Of course, robustess of a solution comes with a prize tag: If you want to be very conservative in the sense that the decision is the best worst-case decision, even if this worst case will not occur almost surely, then you should use the robustness approach of worst-case optimization. If however, there is some insight into the probability distribution of the data, then it makes sense to use probabilistic robustness where you accept to use decisions that will only be feasible with a prescribed probability, for example 0.99. Of course this comes with a risk, but there is no such thing as a free lunch!

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Photo by the blowup on Unsplash

Photo by the blowup on Unsplash

Why is it important?

In companies, it is important not to be over-conservative in order to optimize the operation. In the application of gas networks, the precise customer demand is uncertain and the operation has to be able to react to variations of this demand. In the operation of gas flow, the pressure is increased at certain compressor stations and the evolution of the pressure along the pipe is influenced by the flow rate. The system is governed by a hyperbolic system of balance laws, which has to be taken into account in order to determine the probability distribution of the pressure at the outflow nodes as a function of the customer demand.

Perspectives