The reliability aspect of this self-contained system is quite impressive. Over the course of my life, I've personally experience many power outages, water outages, cell service outages, internet outages, etc. but never a natural gas outage.
In the sixties, hexavelent chromium was used as a rust inhibitor in cooling towers in a Hinkley PG&E compressor station. It caused ground water contamination affecting the health of many.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_groundwater_contamination" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_groundwater_contaminat...</a>
This is interesting, especially for me as one of the intrastate pipelines on the map crosses through my property.<p>However, the article doesn't say what the "PIG" is (but talks at length about how the "PIG" is "launched" or "received"). Wikipedia says it's basically a passive device that gets inserted into the pipeline and pushed along by the pressure to clean or inspect the inside of the pipe.
If you wanna see cutouts of a bunch of this equipment, a pig in a transparent pipe, and just happen to be in Oman, the petroleum development museum there is super.<p>Id imagine there's something similar in Houston, this stuff is legit fascinating.
<i>theoretically</i>, compressing gas is energyless. Ie. you get back exactly the same amount of energy when decompressing as you got when compressing, so you should be able to do it with no loss.<p>Practically, that's fairly far from true for today's technology. Gas is so cheap that we're happy to waste a bunch of energy to make the plant cheaper.
I think most people would agree with you. Electrical power outages are somewhat common, but gas delivery seems very solid.
Yet when selecting a home backup generator, most people opt for a gasoline powered generator and NOT one powered by natural gas.
There was a good video on B1M related to this recently<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eKsaGqUfvI" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eKsaGqUfvI</a>