Energy metering for the urban gas system: A case study in China

With the continued downturn in global crude oil prices, the natural gas market shows a rapid growth trend. The coordination of natural gas trade is becoming more and more important, and many organizations have put forward natural gas energy metering the schemes. Nowadays, the energy metering schemes for long-distance natural gas pipelines have been approaching maturity, but the energy metering scheme between urban gas gate stations and urban gas users has not yet been proposed. Therefore, this paper takes two different types of cities in China for instance to verify the rationality of urban gas energy metering, and proposes a specific plan for urban gas energy metering. Taking Beijing (China) and Dali (Yunnan Province, China) urban gas systems as examples, by comparing the energy metering method with traditional volumetric metering method, it can be obtained that the use of volumetric metering method in Beijing and Dali will lead to different degrees of extra economic losses to the natural gas companies, and the extra economic losses in winter are the biggest. For some cities with high temperature in summer, the use of volumetric metering will lead extra economic losses in winter and extra economic benefits in summer. Therefore, it is fairer to use the urban gas energy metering method. Furthermore, the method of establishing an urban gas energy metering system and the method of building an Internet plus-based management system are proposed in this paper. Keywords: Urban gas, Energy metering, Energy valuation, Volumetric metering, Internet plus