Portsdown Hill Injection Hub

The Portsdown Hill facility is the UK’s first purpose-built gas injection hub, designed to provide all year-round grid access to remote biomethane producers.

The Injection Hub concept developed by SGN Commercial Services, was for a large volume centralised facility to serve multiple remote bio-methane production sites that are unable to inject gas locally due to unsuitable local capacity.

The transport of gas is by trailers and its technology was already well established and tested pre-2012, with methane trailers operating at pressures of around 250 bar. However, it was the injection facility that presented the technical challenge as this was a new concept to the gas industry. Traditionally, gas networks within the UK operate up to pressures of 100 bar so innovative safety systems and downloading equipment were developed and added to the gas network at this entry point to ensure the extension of the gas network could operate safely given the trainer delivery pressures.

At full capacity, the site can accept enough low carbon energy to meet the annual heat demand for up to approximately 27,000 customers in the local Havant and Portsmouth areas. The biomethane entry facility at Portsdown Hill was, at the time, the largest connection or ‘green gas’ source entering a Gas Distribution Network (GDN) in the UK, and the only network entry point not requiring enrichment by the addition of propane.

The Portsdown Hill facility was designed and built with four operational stanchions with one in reserve for maintenance, however the site can accommodate five tankers simultaneously downloading at 1,200m³ per hour.