Implications of solar facilities on adjacent pipeline infrastructure

As oil and gas operators ramp up their efforts to reduce their carbon footprint, more renewable energy projects will be constructed adjacent to pipeline infrastructure.

As part of this effort, a major North American pipeline operator has initiated a program to install solar facilities at its pump and compressor stations. These solar facilities often involve the installation of thousands of interconnected and grounded bare steel piles, which could compromise the corrosion protection of nearby pipeline assets.

While potentially also introducing alternating current (AC) and direct current (DC) interference risks on buried pipelines, the solar facilities themselves could be subjected to interference from the pipelines’ cathodic protection systems.

In the September Issue of Materials Performance, Stantec’s Wolfgang Fieltsch and Keith Parker (Enbridge) discuss a pilot project where several key design factors were considered for minimizing interference and corrosion risks to both pipelines and solar facilities coexisting in the same corridor.