**6.1 Gas network constraints in the United States of America**

In the United States, the wide network of interstate and intrastate pipelines that runs throughout the country has several open issues to solve in order to strengthen the stability and reliability of the American gas network:

Implementation of existing pipelines and infrastructure. In spite of the growth in consumption, the US transmission infrastructure does not properly cover all the country and large areas suffer the lack of sufficient pipelines with the adequate capacity for gas delivery, such as the Northwest and New England [35]. In order to face this constraint, new upcoming projects are expected to increase the number and capacity of the existing pipelines in order to transmit natural gas from production centers to consuming markets or exports terminals. Recent projects intended to increase the reach of natural gas produced in the Marcellus and Utica regions of the Northeastern United States (see **Figure 7**). New infrastructures are expected to be built from the Appalachia production between 2015 and 2025.

Implementation of new pipelines and processing infrastructure. Forecast of energy needs beyond 2025 expects a significant impact of the growth in demand for gas-fired power generation on the existing pipeline system. In particular, to face the growth in electric demand, additional pipelines are needed in order to ensure the system's reliability. The gas demand for power generation will increase by 73% between 2014 and 2025, in comparison to the 39% increase between 2005 and 2014. New pipelines and processing infrastructure are required to face this growing demand and to connect the end user to new supply source [37].

*Demand Response Applications for the Operation of Smart Natural Gas Systems DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101810*

**Figure 7.** *Implementation of new pipelines in USA (source: [36]).*

