GIS - geographic information system - is being used for more and more applications. After all, the transition to renewable energy systems requires solutions that are also integrated into the rúimere environment of a building or site.
GIS is an information system that can process and combine spatial data to arrive at new insights. Thanks to the abundance of high quality public data, often made available by the (local) government, we have access to a kind of 'digital twin' of the physical world. For example, the Flemish Government makes things available such as a 3D model of the building stock, the road file, a digital elevation model, land cover and usage maps, composition of the subsurface, but also energy consumption data, possible (residual) heat sources and so on.
It is this integration of widely available public data with the specific project data that allows us to look at the energy story at a higher level. We address questions such as
'What other buildings in the area demand a lot of energy, or have complementary energy demands?' ,
'Where can we generate our own energy in the vicinity of our largest consumers?',
'Where are the interesting large heat consumers or heat sources located in our municipality?'
Ingenium developed a proprietary GIS-based heat grid tool for the optimization of existing and the study and design of new heat grids. This tool is flexible and applicable to all temperature levels, both classical heat networks and very low temperature source networks.
The GIS-based tool provides insight into the local urban planning context on the one hand and the heat demand of the studied area on the other hand in a very fast and graphical way. On the basis of this data, potentially interesting high-quality heat network routes can be plotted.
Our tool makes it possible to dimension heat networks and to gain insight into the hydraulic operation of the heat network (temperature gradient, pressure drop gradient, potential future bottle necks, etc.).
Design variants such as alternative routes and possible connection of additional heat consumers can be quickly calculated and the results graphically displayed on a map.
We already applied the heat grid tool in projects all over Flanders and some studies abroad, from feasibility studies to design to optimization of existing heat grids.
In one of our recent energy master plans, we made the connection between the land owned (some 5,000 ha, spread throughout Flanders) on the one hand, and the nearby electricity consumers on the other. This allowed us to establish a link between the potential for generating our own electricity and using it immediately in the area itself.
For this, we made a combination of the land owned and subsurface properties (public data) to estimate the potential for PV installations.
Thanks to a link with consumers, our client now has a clear priority list of projects to make its energy supply as sustainable as possible.
A client in Brussels wants to install PV installations on as many of its buildings (over 800) as possible. With GIS data including 3D images of the buildings, we can calculate the optimal yield based on the orientation of the roofs and the type of roof (sloping or flat). For each building, we made a sheet with a 3D image and an aerial photo. So here again GIS proved to be a useful tool to design PV installations based on public data in a largely automated way and to roll them out on a large scale.
Want to know more about the possible applications of GIS for your project? Contact Thomas Koch at 050 40 45 30 or thomas.koch@ingenium.be.
