Enabling the natural gas system as smart infrastructure: Metering technologies for customer applications

Natural gas systems, similarly to the rest of energy systems, are evolving towards a highly technified structure where high level of metering devices, monitoring and communication activities, are calling to play the starring role. EU countries started the replacement of the traditional gas meters with smart devices in 2012, but the massive rollout is still on going. This paper presents a review on the smart meter devices for the natural gas sector that are available in the market. An overview on the existing smart technologies and their peculiarities will be presented and sensor technical characteristics will be highlighted. Furthermore, the needs of these new technologies and the natural gas communication infrastructure will be explored. On the other side, existing barriers that prevent their suitable deployment of such devices will be analyzed. Finally, their potential evolution and future application will be briefly outlined.