New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Demand for natural gas continues despite pandemic
Efforts to expand natural gas service to more Connecticut residents in 2020 were slowed by the coronavirus pandemic, but are still ongoing, according to officials with the state’s three largest utilities that provide the fuel.
The effort to expand natural gas service was launched in 2014 at a time when natural gas prices were at historic lows.
Those prices have continued to remain low through much of last year.
“The demand for natural gas has never been greater,” said Dave Allain, director of natural gas sales and marketing at Eversource
Energy. “We've got 450customer backlog. But it’s not something we can’t manage.”
Some of the reason for the backlog, though, is the result of the impact the pandemic has had on Eversource’s natural gas conversion efforts.
The conversion program
was shut down for several months starting March. It has since resumed, but on a limited basis, according to Allain.
“It has been sporadic,” he said. How long it will take for Eversource to eliminate its backlog of conversion work depends upon what social distancing restrictions are needed during 2021, Allain said.
“It is our intent to begin serving them within the first six months” of 2021, he said, referring to the customer backlog.
Ed Crowder, a spokesman for Southern Connecticut Gas and Connecticut Natural Gas, said the two companies have been doing conversions throughout the pandemic, but using appropriate safety measures. The two utilities, which are owned by Orange-based Avangrid, use virtual site visits in advance of the actual conversion work in homes.
“It’s work that we would otherwise do on-site, identifying the furnace and marking the meter location,” Crowder said.
When personnel and contractors must enter a customer’s property, they follow a protocol that includes a screening for COVID-19-related concerns, maintaining distance, and using personal protective equipment as necessary, he said.
“There are also some general, companywide protocols we’ve all been following — limiting one person per vehicle, use of face coverings, personal hygiene, enhanced cleaning,” Crowder said.
When the impact that COVID-19 has had on Eversource’s natural gas conversion efforts is taken into account, Allain said he considers 2020 to have been “a really good year.” The company did about 1,700 residential conversions in 2020, a 19 percent decline from the number it did in 2019.
“We have not actively marketed conversions since March,” he said. “I’m hopeful we can begin actively marketing again in April.”
An example of Eversource’s natural gas service expansion is this year’s completion of a $30 million expansion project in Fairfield County between New Canaan and Norwalk. The project took three years to complete and, according to Allain, homeowners located along new extensions of mains often take months or even years to convert their service.
“You need at least three years to gain momentum,” he said.
Since the natural gas expansion plan for the Connecticut utilities was approved in 2014, Eversource has added 27,000 customers and 135 miles of new mains, according to Allain.
Crowder said SCG and CNG had installed 16.26 miles of new gas main, surpassing the annual goal by 2.76 miles. In 2019, the companies converted 5,415 new gas meters and installed 21.4 miles of new main.
SCG has 196,000 customers in 24 Connecticut communities, including 11 in the New Haven area and six in Fairfield County. CNG has about 177,000 customers in 26 communities in the Hartford and New Britain areas as well as in Greenwich.