Toscana Energia takes next step in gas network digitalisation
Italgas subsidiary Toscana Energia is introducing the in-house developed Digital Advanced Network Automation (DANA) control system at its distribution plants.
The DANA system is being introduced first at the company’s San Casciano distribution plant, close to the city of Florence, before wider implementation across others.
DANA, a proprietary software that was developed within Italgas’s Digital Factory, is designed to provide operators with a real-time overview of the gas distribution system, in order to enable timely verification of the functioning of all the components and their direct remote management.
A cartographic system incorporated in the software also allows navigation of the individual segments of the network.
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Operational data collected from the field feeds into analytics and predictive maintenance algorithms, which allow operating anomalies to be identified and new approaches to the operation and maintenance of distribution assets to be introduced.
“The digital transformation of networks is the technical precondition that allows them to accommodate and manage renewable gases, such as biomethane and hydrogen, whose production is expected to develop strongly in the coming years,” Toscana Energia states in a statement.
Toscana Energia manages the gas distribution service in 101 municipalities in nine provinces in central and southwestern Tuscany, including Florence and Pisa, supplying over 752,000 residential and 43,000 commercial and industrial customers.
The digitalisation of the networks is a key focus of the company, and Italgas as a whole, and over 99% of residential customers are reported to have the latest generation smart gas meters.
The long term goal with DANA, which is planned to be extended to half of Toscana Energia’s plants within the year, is to provide remote management of the gas networks and plants for the delivery of green gas mixtures to the end customers safely and efficiently.
