Gasunie: driving sustainability and efficiency in the Dutch energy sector with Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform

“We haven’t just created a data platform, but a new working culture and mindset too. We’re much more aware of what we can do with our data and find new cases for it every day – especially in the context of sustainable transformation.”

Peter Scholtens, IT manager at Dutch energy network operator Gasunie, is describing the data platform his organization recently created and the role this is allowing it to play within the global energy transition.

“At Gasunie, we have a simple mission,” Scholtens explains. “To facilitate the energy transition by providing integrated infrastructure services in The Netherlands. And to do it in the smartest and most innovative way possible.”

Responsible for one of the largest high-pressure gas pipeline grids in Europe – as well as a growing network of hydrogen – Gasunie sees data as crucial element in achieving this goal – and knows that Microsoft will help in doing it.

To this end, the pair recently joined forces and created a data platform that aims to better leverage Gasunie’s data and analytics – allowing them to improve decision-making and efficiency across its network and ultimately play an even greater role in the national energy transition.

“It’s a critical time for the global energy sector, and we must all do our part,” says Scholtens. “At Gasunie, we not only understand that but also want to turn this into practical, meaningful action.

“That’s what our platform is for. From natural gas to LNG, hydrogen, Nitrogen, Heat, Carbon Capture and Storage , we have an incredible new tool to support our current and future energy developments – and help us make the world a greener place.”

A company in evolution

Headquartered in Groningen, Netherlands, Gasunie has spent more than 60 years running energy infrastructure and transportation in the country and in northern Germany.

Historically focused on gas pipeline grids, which currently run for over 15,000 kilometres, the company has recently been venturing into more sustainable forms of energy such as hydrogen and reusable heat.

“We’ve long been known as a traditional gas infrastructure company, but over the past few years we’ve doubled up on our commitment to reaching the Paris Agreement climate goals,” says Scholtens. “To do that, we’ve been looking at implementing other sources and doing it using the latest technology.”

More specifically, Gasunie has developed a digital ambition where data-driven working and decision making are an important element. “In the last few years, our data landscape was becoming more of an obstacle to our goals rather than a support ,” he says.

"We needed a more modern solution that allowed all of us easier access to it, better control of the data and more scalability. For us, that solution was Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform.”

Building out a partnership with Microsoft

As they set out to build their new data platform, the Gasunie team had a clear idea in mind of what they wanted and who should be providing it.

“We were coming from a fully on-prem infrastructure where the data was stored in our own data centers,” says Ester Mathijssen, Teamlead BI at Gasunie. “But as we started generating more and more of it, the system started to struggle.

“We knew it was a matter of time before it stopped handling the data the way we needed. That’s when we decided to look into Microsoft Azure.”

By that point, Gasunie had been a Microsoft partner for years, so selecting Azure was a no-brainer for the team. “The beauty of Azure is that your data stack is limitless, and for the scope of our operations that’s exactly what we needed,” adds Arthur Kerkhof, architect at Gasunie.

“On top of that, we had years of successful collaborations with Microsoft that had already shown us their commitment and support, especially when implementing new technology. They were the perfect advisor for that and for all the solutions we implemented since – from Power BI, Designer Suite, Data Lake Storage and of course Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform.”

A revolutionary new platform for the benefit of the European energy community

Months since the completion of its data project, the team is seeing huge benefits from its Gasunie Data Platform (GDP) – and is already applying across its many operations.

“Data is more than ever at the heart of what we do here,” says Kerkhof. “Every decision we make is now based on insights that we transform into tangible action, and therefore much more informed than ever before.”

Such insights are a truly combined effort between the IT team and the business, which GDP depends on – and have already made operations far simpler than ever before. “As part of them, we often provide data to external customers such as shippers and connected parties, but we use it internally too,” he says.

“For decades, however, doing that had become difficult. We’ve had instances where we provided data to the same organization but had to take it from different systems because we didn’t have a single version of the truth.

“Now, our system is finally making us more dynamic and agile – allowing us to provide data in a more correct and consistent way.” 

This, he explains, has become particularly important over the past couple of years, due to the geopolitical tensions taking place in Europe. “What’s happening in the world has caused huge concern over the availability of gas in the Netherlands. To inform the market we created a dashboard about the security of supply of natural gas on our public website to provide updates on the level of gas storage present in the country,” he continues.

“This is made possible by our GDP platform, which directly processes all the data and then integrates it on our public website.”

On top of that, he says, GDP has allowed to create a uniform business definition of the data in matters such as internal and external reporting, as well as for external data exchange. “This has made it much easier to answer the business questions and combine data across the domains,” he comments.

Shifting the focus towards sustainable sources

The more time goes by, the more intelligent the platform becomes – and the more use cases Gasunie can identify for it.

The transportation of gas is a prime example. “In the process of transporting gas to gas receiving stations in our grid, pressure reductions take place. As a result of a pressure reduction the gas temperature is lowered too. To meet our gas delivery requirements the gas is heated at the gas receiving stations before delivering it to end users,” says Scholtens. 

“As part of our operations, we need to report the heating of this gas via the heating boilers that we’ve placed inside the stations, because they produce CO2. To do that, we’ve created a machine learning model that can predict the CO2 levels of heating boilers provided with the relevant gas transport data.”

The data stores in the GDP provide the model with the relevant data and the model runs within the Azure Machine learning part of the GDP. Results of the model are then stored in the data stores where Power BI reports are used for dashboarding and reporting purposes.

A similar concept is being applied to the LNG Terminal (EemsEnergyTerminal) that the company recently built in the north of The Netherlands. “Here too, we’re helping on-site staff to forecast heat demand needed for the regassification of the LNG,” he continues.

“In these cases, we’ve also been able configure our platform to show insight in the different options to warm it up – varying form using normal sea water, (re-)using heat from the nearby coal powerplant or heat coming from the onsite traditional gas boilers.

Currently working on a hydrogen network as an alternative to natural gas, the company sees these as meaningful steps towards making its operations even more environmentally friendly.

A platform for everyone, not just IT

With data now at the heart of its strategy, Gasunie has started to expand its platform and incorporate it with even more advanced technologies, including machine learning and the Internet of Things.

“The beauty of the GDP is that it’s not only helpful to generate insights and reporting – it’s a place where machine learning models, IoT models and more can all be run in a centralized, efficient and qualitative way,” says Ester Mathijssen.

“Take our IoT initiative for example. In the Netherlands, we have about 11,000 cathodic poles dotted across our landscape, which are used to monitor the state protection layers of our pipelines, for cathodic protection. In the past, we would have a mechanic drive to each one twice a year and collect data on them.

“Now, that same data is collected via an IoT platform that allows us to keep better track of the state of our pipeline protection layers and reduce costs and time.”

This, adds Scholtens, is not just a helpful solution for the present – it’s also a clear hint to what the future holds for Gasunie.

“We’re nowhere near the end of our digital transformation journey,” he says. “More and more people in our company are getting on-board with it and learning to use it, so the opportunities within continue to evolve.”

So do the company culture and mindset too. “GDP is no longer just a platform used by IT, but a common product that people want to be part of,” he concludes. “Everyone now sees data as pivotal to decision making, and wants Gasunie to become a more data-driven company.

“By creating the platform, we’ve embraced a new way of working centered on bringing data to our platform and using it to create more and more data products and models. All while getting one step closer to our sustainability pledges.”