Between the Poles: Modeling downtown The Hague to reduce energy consumption

Geoff Zeiss

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OSGeo was created to support the collaborative development of open source geospatial software and promote its widespread use
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I thought it would be worth while to include here a talk I gave at GEOGRAPHY 2050 Powering Our Future Planet at Columbia University in New York about the importance of accurate location information about underground infrastructure for the future development of the energy grid. With some notable exceptions accurately recording the location of subsurface infrastructure including oil, gas, electric power and other energy infrastructure is ignored - perhaps this is a case of out-of-sight is indeed out-of-mind. The reality is that knowing the location of underground energy infrastructure is critical for national security, for disaster planning and management, for public safety and for economic efficiency. Everyone is aware of at least one disaster resulting from or exacerbated by not knowing where our energy infrastructure is - the explosions in San Bruno in California (2010) and Belgium (2004) immediately come to mind.
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Transmission line inspections for vegetation management and other purposes are essential in ensuring grid reliability and resilience. We saw the devastating effect of vegetation encroachment in the recent California fires, which in part have been blamed on failure to maintain properly cleared transmission lines. With drones that can cover great distances in a single flight and provide detailed and accurate aerial imagery of transmission lines and other infrastructure, it is now possible to almost completely automate this expensive process. Automating transmission line inspections for vegetation management using BVLOS drones not only saves money, but also could improve the resiliency and reliability of the transmission grid.

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May 24, 2013

Modeling downtown The Hague to reduce energy consumption

I've blogged previously about a project by the Los Angeles Community College District, the largest community college district in the U.S., create 3D BIM models of all the buildings on the LACCD campuses. One of the most important motivations for creating these models was that BIM models would faciliate energy performance analyses of LACCD buildings.

Reducing energy usage in The Hague

At the Geospatial World Forum 2013 (GWF 2013) conference in Rotterdam Martinus Vranken and Jene van der Heide of the Dutch Kadasre described a project to model a square kilometer of downtown The Hague with the objective of reducing and stabilizing energy usage and costs for the entire area.

The Dutch Ministry of the Interior has initiated a joint project with the Municipal government of The Hague to reduce and stabiize energy usage and costs in downtown The Hague, including the use of renewable energy. The study area is roughly about a square kilometer of The Hague where the buildings are large and mostly owned by the National and Municipal governments. The Dutch Kadaster has been contracted to provide an information system to assist the Ministry of Interior in developing a business case.

The Kadaster has combined its own data with that from other government agencies

Kadaster

Topography
Ownership and building information
Energy labels
Underground grids electricity, gas and heat
Monuments

Ministry of the Interior and City of The Hague

Energy consumption
Employees
Surfaces suitable for solar panels
3D model

Province of South Holland

Heat pump facilities
Solar probability map
Wind probability map

Ministry of Economic Affairs

Geothermal facilities
Permits for geothermal concessions

The Kadaster has assembled land registry information like ownership, monument status; building information such as year of completion, surface area, energy labels, energy indices; information on underground networks like heat networks, gas and electricity grids; together with government information on heat pump facilities, energy consumption of buildings, and available building facade area suited for solar panels. Combining this information provides a tool that the Ministry is using to develop the busness case for a new form of energy supply that is reliable, clean, and affordable.

The two main challenges have been to translate this information to fit the perspective of the Ministry of the Interior and structuring the information so that it can be reused for similar projects in the future.

The next steps on the project are data collection and processing, defining business case, and tendering and then transition to the new energy supply.

The lessons learned so fare are interesting. First of all, visualization using a geospatial information platform has been vital in developing the business case. This approach has provided important Insight into the energy and heat exchange possibilities between buildings and enabled exploration of the possibilities of solar, wind and geothermal energy. The geospatial approach also provides a platform which the private sector can use as a foundation in preparing bids for the project.