A live hydrogen trial on the Grangemouth to Granton pipeline will begin in 2025 and last six months. Before we summarise the demonstrations and assessments we’ll be carrying out during the live trial, we want to emphasise the importance of safety.
Always safety first
Safety is always our priority. An important part of this is engaging with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), Great Britain’s national independent regulator for workplace health and safety, as part of this project.
Following HSE guidelines, we’ve created a plan for how we'll operate the pipeline during the hydrogen trial, including procedures, safety measures, training, and emergency provisions. This plan, or Case for Safety (CfS) was supplied to the HSE and reviewed against the same rigorous process as our natural gas case for safety.
Emergency response simulation
Emergency services, including SGN, are the first responders in the event of any crisis. We work together with local authorities to make sure we have plans to deal with these incidents safely. We’ll simulate a hydrogen emergency response to help us understand if our response plans need to adapt.
Capacity assessment
An important function of the local transmission system (LTS) is to store gas within the pipeline when gas demand is low. This storage is called linepacking and gives us a resilient supply to cover colder periods when demand is high. We’ll assess the capacity of the Grangemouth to Granton pipeline to understand the storage difference between hydrogen and natural gas.
Flow stopping
We often need to isolate sections of a pipeline when we’re repairing or maintaining it. This is called flow stopping. We have currently tested different flow stopping techniques for hydrogen at our project partner DNV’s Spadeadam facility and will be demonstrating these during the live trial.
Hot works
Gas engineers work on live natural gas pipelines, so we can keep the gas flowing to industry, businesses and homes while we’re looking after our pipes. To do this work we often need to carry out live welding - or hot works. Comprehensive hot works trials were undertaken at the DNV Spadeadam test site to define appropriate live welding and under-pressure drilling procedures. A full demonstration of the process will be repeated during the live trial in a UK first.
The outcome of all this work, including a desktop analysis of other selected pipelines throughout the UK and a cost assessment, will give us a blueprint for repurposing the entire LTS to hydrogen, helping to achieve net zero.
How we are doing it
To complete the live trial, we must simulate the demand for gas we would see in a real-life environment. To do this we have installed a 15-metre enclosed flare at SGN’s Training Centre in Granton. The flare will burn the hydrogen to create the demand which will allow our teams to complete the work on the pipeline.
While we complete this pioneering project, you may notice additional activity on and around our training centre and hear intermittent noise. We have installed notice boards on the outside of our facility, and we aim to ensure these are always updated with the dates of our latest planned activity, additionally you can come back here for updates or more information about the project.
Dates of Planned Works:
03-Jul-25
14-Jul-25
15-Jul-25
23-Jul-25
24-Jul-25
26-Jul-25
27-Jul-25
02-Sep-25
03-Sep-25
04-Sep-25
05-Sep-25
The outcome of all this work, including a desktop analysis of other selected pipelines throughout the UK and a cost assessment, will give us a blueprint for repurposing the entire LTS to hydrogen, helping to achieve net zero.