ensure that all customers receive timely delivery of their portion of this gas, sophisticated control systems are required to monitor the gas as it travels through all sections of the pipeline network. To accomplish this task of monitoring and controlling the natural gas that is travelling through the pipeline, centralized gas control stations collect, assimilate, and manage data received from monitoring and compressor stations all along the pipe. Most of the data that is received by a control station is provided by Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems. These systems are essentially sophisticated communications systems that key measurements and collect data along the pipeline (usually in a metering or compressor stations and valves) and transmit it to the centralized control station.
Flow rate through the pipeline, operational status, pressure, and temperature readings may all be used to assess the status of the pipeline at any one time. These systems also work in real time, meaning that there is little lag time between the measurements taken along the pipeline and their transmission to the control station. The requirement The key requirement for such sophisticated communication systems is that the data needs to be relayed to a centralized control station, allowing pipeline engineers to know exactly what is happening along the pipeline at all times.
