• Jo Miran
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    1911 months ago

    I cannot speak for this situation but I can offer some insight into the systems responsible. One of my firm’s specializations is data integrity and optimization, and one of our clients is a utilities company. The system we managebis supposed to detect, report, and shutdown any gas meter with anomalous behavior, then dispatch a crew to investigate. The SLA (maximum allowed time before penalties are incurred) from anomaly to shutdown is two minutes. We have it down to under thirty seconds.

    If this was an accidental gas leak severe enough to prompt for a crew dispatch, then the meter should have been shut down long before there was enough lost gas to blow up a house.

    PS: Propane tank fueled furnace in the basement is bad, mmmmkay.

    • Shadow
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      411 months ago

      Interesting. How do you differentiate between someone turning on a stove on high for 15 minutes, vs a burst pipe?

      • @AFaithfulNihilist
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        811 months ago

        I’m not a professional or an expert but I know that even when you turn it up to full it’s not releasing as much gas as it would if you just opened it up and let it go freely from the pipe. No matter what you have it plugged into, your gas line is being pressure regulated.

      • Jo Miran
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        111 months ago

        We focus on making sure that the data in ingested and processed in a timely manner. The logic is internal to the app so I don’t have visibility into that but I know the meters also monitor other metrics like line pressure.