Supply, demand planning model simulates Equitable's gas balance

Because most of Equitable's 250,000 customers use gas primarily for space heating, aggregate demand is highly temperature-dependent and therefore difficult to forecast. In 1976, the company decided to replace manual supply-demand planning with a computerized daily demand/supply planning model (DESPLAN) that simulates Equitable's daily gas balance. First used in the fall of 1976, DESPLAN's initial output indicated the company faced serious supply problems. After purchasing additional gas supplies, Equitable experienced no residential or commercial outages during the coldest winter in a century. Since then, DESPLAN has been used to test Equitable's ability to meet peak-day demands, to evaluate the availability of gas for off-system sales, and to analyze various operational projects. Considerable savings have resulted from several of these studies.