NYSEG, a utility company in New York and subsidiary of Iberdrola USA, has opened a new compressed natural gas (CNG) facility in Mechanicville that enables it to increase the supply of natural gas available to its customers via a “virtual pipeline.”
NYSEG says natural gas deliveries by truck create the virtual pipeline to inject more CNG into NYSEG’s local delivery system, allowing NYSEG to lift a three-year moratorium on providing new natural gas service in Mechanicville and the towns of Stillwater and Halfmoon.
“Faced with limited natural gas supply here, our people came up with an innovative solution to ensure the availability of clean, economical natural gas to existing and prospective NYSEG customers in the Mechanicville area,” says Mark S. Lynch, president and CEO of NYSEG and RG&E. “This facility is the product of a team effort, and we thank our project partners for helping to make it a reality.”
The facility consists of a CNG unloading and decompression station and a new steel building that houses pressure regulation equipment and the connection to NYSEG’s existing local natural gas distribution system.
NYSEG’s Boston-based vendor, XNG, trucks CNG to the site where it is offloaded into the utility’s local natural gas distribution system as needed. It will be used from Nov. 1 through March 31 each winter, when demand for natural gas is highest.
