GIS-Based Planning and Modeling for Renewable Energy: Challenges and Future Research Avenues

Abstract

Abstract:In the face of the broad political call for an -energy turnaround‖, we are currently witnessing three essential trends with regard to energy infrastructure planning, energy generation and storage: from planned production towards fluctuating production on the basis of renewable energy sources, from centralized generation towards decentralized generation and from expensive energy carriers towards cost-free energy carriers. These changes necessitate considerable modifications of the energy infrastructure. Even though most of these modifications are inherently motivated by geospatial questions and challenges, the integration of energy system models and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is still in its infancy. This paper analyzes the shortcomings of previous approaches in using GIS in renewable energy-related projects, extracts distinct challenges from these previous efforts and, finally, defines a set of core future research avenues for GIS-based energy infrastructure planning with a focus on the use of renewable energy. These future OPEN ACCESS ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2014, 3 663 research avenues comprise the availability base data and their -geospatial awareness‖, the development of a generic and unified data model, the usage of volunteered geographic information (VGI) and crowdsourced data in analysis processes, the integration of 3D building models and 3D data analysis, the incorporation of network topologies into GIS, the harmonization of the heterogeneous views on aggregation issues in the fields of energy and GIS, fine-grained energy demand estimation from freely-available data sources, decentralized storage facility planning, the investigation of GIS-based public participation mechanisms, the transition from purely structural to operational planning, data privacy aspects and, finally, the development of a new dynamic power market design.Keywords: integration of GIS and energy system models; GIS and renewable energy; GIS-based energy infrastructure planning; future research challenges; fluctuating renewables; structural planning of local energy systems; operation optimization

Solar Irradiance Modelling with NASA WW GIS Environment

“…This would allow enough level of detail to be significant when estimating the energy that gets obstructed by the canopy, which is complementary to the energy that enters the food-chain or energy balance in the case of ecological applications, [34]. To conclude, this investigation can lead to numerous applications which are of great interest to the community, not only from the point of view of a detailed model of the behavior of solar radiation and thus for planning renewable energy infrastructure [35], but also for ecological models and energy balance analysis, or to further improve other modules [36,37]. This first implementation can also be a starting point for further work by other researchers using NASA WW and interested at this scope.…”

GIS-based optimal photovoltaic panel floorplanning for residential installations

“…Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are becoming a useful technology to model solar potential [2] and to plan the deployments of solar generators in urban environments [3]. Such GIS-based tools often start their analysis from a Digital Surface Model (DSM) or 3D city models obtained from LiDAR data, representing the earth's surface and all objects and buildings on it.…”

“…Subhourly information is necessary to better estimate the optimal energy production, and low DSM resolutions (i.e., > 1m) do not allow to recognize obstacles on rooftops (e.g., chimneys, dormers). Moreover, to provide more accurate estimations, real weather data from weather stations [3] must be considered to compute incident radiation on rooftops in real-sky conditions. Finally, none of presented solutions provide guidelines for a smart, GIS-driven floorplanning of PV arrays.…”

Highly resolved optimal renewable allocation planning in power systems under consideration of dynamic grid topology

“…While the vast majority of RES-E is connected on the distribution grid level, the additional stress on the transmission grid level also needs to be considered when investigating national or pan-national allocation problems. Approaches which deal with largescale real-world applications of intermittent RES-E allocation require GIS-based data [8] and are today restricted to single energy sources such as solar [9], wind [10] or limited spatial scales when covering multiple RES types [11]. Overall, a number of real-world sized approaches are available that address the first requirement [12][13][14].…”