A Fast Reliability Analysis Approach for Colombian Natural Gas Subnetworks

Abstract

The Colombian natural gas sector is going through a challenging stage concerning the management of available reserves. Recently, some weather conditions have shown drawbacks in security and reliability regarding supply and transportation. Regasification technology has been installed in the system as a solution for leading the unbalance between demand and supply. However, the inadequate pipeline infrastructure for transporting large natural gas flows in the short and long-term is demanding an expansion for enhancing the system reliability. Here, we develop a Markov chain-based isolation method for performing fast reliability analysis in subnetworks of the Colombian natural gas system, based on the optimal operational cost. We assess our methodology on a real data set concerning a simplified Colombian natural gas system. Obtained results show that our proposal remarkably improves the computation time employed for computing the reliability of subnetworks and preserves the accuracy in the calculation of the optimal operational cost.