Portgás reaches 400,000 gas customer mark

Portuguese natural gas distributor REN Portgás Distribuição has reported passing the 400,000 gas customer milestone.

Portgás, fully owned by Portugal’s electricity and gas transmission system operator Redes Energéticas Nacionais (REN), now counts more than one quarter of the country’s gas customers with the “important milestone” reached in the 25th year of supply to domestic customers.

Portgás distributes gas in 29 municipalities in the districts of Porto, Braga and Viana do Castelo in the north of Portugal.

Since 2018, the company has connected an average of 12,000 customers per year to its network, which is the country’s largest, extending over 5,000km and distributing more than 7TWh of energy per year.

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Portgás, which was acquired by REN Gás in 2017, claims to be the first Portuguese natural gas distributor to receive certification in research, development and innovation, as well as having official recognition in the areas of quality, environment and safety and, more recently, in business continuity.

As part of its asset decarbonisation and digitisation strategy, the company has established partnerships with universities, companies and institutions with the objective of developing projects to decarbonise and digitise its networks.

Among these is the introduction of renewable gases and green hydrogen in particular and earlier in the year a test facility was established with Portugal’s Institute of Science and Innovation in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (INEGI) to investigate the impact of hydrogen injection in the gas network.

With this work, the partners expect to define the requirements and specifications for a future hydrogen infrastructure.

Portgás is also launching energy efficiency initiatives with Portugal’s energy regulator ERSE having introduced the requirement for efficiency measures in natural gas consumption alongside those for electricity.

The first two measures approved are the replacing of older gas water heaters of vulnerable customers with more modern high efficiency heaters and the replacing and scrapping of older inefficient boilers in the homes of residential customers, this latter in partnership with the country’s other gas network operators.