Replacement of natural gas with electricity to improve seismic service resilience: An application to domestic energy utilities in Iran

In recent years, the occurrence of seismic natural disasters has threatened the post-fault performance of community lifelines in seismically prone parts of the world. Among all utilities, natural gas and electricity serve a significant portion of domestic energy consumption in residential regions. Meanwhile, due to their more proximity to seismic waves, underground natural gas networks seem more vulnerable to earthquakes, and their functionality can be disrupted for several days. This paper presents an approach to derive an electric model for natural gas-fired loads in residential houses. The electrification scheme is developed to carry out the feasibility study of replacing natural gas utilities with electricity systems. The consumption of household gas appliances is modelled by utilising conventional electric appliances as well as state-of-the-art heat pumps to investigate the possibility of replacing natural gas with electricity for enhancing service resilience. A case of natural gas and electricity networks in Iran is employed to test the proposed method. The results indicate that replacing natural gas with electricity can contribute to an expanded electricity system which exhibits more resiliency against earthquakes. Additionally, high-efficiency heat pumps can guarantee the viability of satisfying all equivalent gas consumption in residential areas, especially warmer regions.