Green Map Powered by ESRI Is Launched on Earth Day

The Renewable Energy Atlas of Vermont, built on ESRI’s ArcGIS technology, was launched on Earth Day, April 22, 2010. Web site visitors can identify, visualize, and analyze data about existing and promising renewable energy projects for Vermont’s towns and counties.

Visitors to the Renewable Energy Atlas of Vermont Web site can select from biomass, efficiency, geothermal, hydroelectric, solar, and wind renewable energy data layers and use geographic information system (GIS) tools to view existing and proposed projects by area. All renewable energy data layers were created and analyzed using ESRI’s ArcGIS Desktop software and published with ArcGIS Server.

The Renewable Energy Atlas of Vermont will assist town energy committees, funders, educators, planners, policy makers, and businesses in making informed decisions about renewable energies in their communities, decisions that ultimately lead to successful projects, greater energy security, a cleaner and healthier environment, and better quality of life across the state.

The Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Fountains Spatial, and Overit Media collaborated to develop the atlas in hopes of moving the state’s renewable energy projects from concept to reality. ESRI provided professional service support.

“We were looking for a way to show people how renewable energy flows through their communities so they can see the options for harnessing it,” said Scott Sawyer, research, evaluation, and communications coordinator at Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund. “The Web site lets them zoom in to a town level or subtown level and look at the renewable energy and efficiency possibility. Our goal was to make the Web site easy and fun. GIS technology, good data, Web design, and easy-to-use applications made this possible.”

The suite of renewable energy options is further broken down into 20 categories of data for specific renewable energy analysis. For example, users can select options for a town, biodiesel, and vegetable oil and see all the restaurants where they can potentially find vegetable oil waste that could be useful for making biodiesel fuel. The site also provides tools for calculating energy potential. A solar model, for instance, allows users to enter a roof’s facing direction, tilt, and percentage of tree shade and produce a calculation of solar energy potential.

The basemaps for the Web site have a beautiful cartographic look. These were acquired from ESRI’s ArcGIS Online basemap services (World Street Map and World Imagery).

“We are excited to work on the project that supports Vermont’s green economy,” noted Mark Haberle, senior project manager at Fountains Spatial. “ESRI’s GIS technology enables the development of tools for robust information discovery and dissemination that makes it easy for people to understand the possibilities of renewable energy. It is our hope that the Renewable Energy Atlas of Vermont will support sustainable job development for Vermont and help the state meet its vision for a carbon-constrained future.”

“GIS technology provides a means for citizens to become informed about their communities and actively participate in making them environmentally sustainable,” said Robin Smith, ESRI’s environmental solutions manager. “ESRI is encouraged by Vermont’s use of geospatial technology to help its citizens participate in the state’s renewable energy efforts.”

Learn about developing a renewable energy Web site for your community by contacting Haberle at Mark.Haberle@fountainsamerica.com. Learn more about ESRI’s GIS solutions for the environment at www.esri.com/environment.

[Source: ESRI press release]

…from the Fall 2009 issue of ArcNews…

Highlights:

• Using ArcGIS Desktop tools, researchers identified all necessary rooftop data.
• ArcGIS Desktop ModelBuilder was used to determine the solar potential of all roof areas.
• The ModelBuilder application gave the team an intuitive interface.

“The solar age has dawned in Germany. About 20 percent of the country’s rooftops are suitable for solar power production, according to recent results from the SUN-AREA Research Project. The project aims to determine how solar energy resources can be optimized by placing photovoltaic panels on rooftops around the country.

“The SUN-AREA project is sponsored by the University of Osnabrück and the TOPSCAN topographical information company. It is led by geomatics engineer Martina Klärle and researchers Dorothea Ludwig and Sandra Lanig.

“Preliminary findings of the SUN-AREA project estimate that, at full potential, solar power could meet the entire energy needs of homes throughout Germany. The team began its work with an examination of the northern German city of Osnabrück.”

• Read the article

…from the Fall 2009 issue of ArcNews…

Highlights:

• ArcGIS improves the quality and accessibility of data to maximize the efficiency of decision making.
• Nearly all the wind power facility layouts can be done with GIS.
• Locating the right site can be done quickly and accurately with publicly available data and GIS technology.

“When Miguel de Cervantes wrote of the impetuous and noble hero Don Quixote 400 years ago, he could not have imagined that one day environmental scientists and energy analysts would “dream the impossible dream” of stocking the electric grid with the power of the wind. Nor could he have envisioned the hulking giants that now line many a horizon, the 400-foot-tall wind turbines each wielding three 130-foot steel blades and weighing 8.5 tons. When he talked of tilting at windmills, the Spanish literary master would not have guessed that public utilities, private companies, and investors would someday look to the wind to “beat the unbeatable foes” of waning fossil fuel supply and deleterious carbon emissions.

“Wind energy now accounts for 1 percent of the United States’ power supply, and forecasts from the U.S. Department of Energy say that figure could reach 20 percent by 2030. While wind farms crop up across the country’s windiest terrain, critics point to the need for new transmission lines and the variability of the wind. Many citizens support the idea as long as it’s “not in my backyard.”"

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…from the Fall 2009 issue of ArcNews…

“California has a large and diverse biomass resource base that could potentially provide the state with renewable energy, according to research from the California Biomass Collaborative. Feedstock for biomass energy production in California comes from forestry and forest products; agriculture; and urban sources, such as municipal wastes. Biomass may also emerge in the form of new crops as the state moves to reduce consumption of fossil fuels and petrochemical feedstock and use more sustainable and renewable resources for energy and products.

“In a recent report, the California Energy Commission asserted that dedicated biomass crops for energy, fuels, chemicals, and other bioproducts may develop given sufficient market incentives or in association with new agronomic practices.”

• Read the article

…from the Fall 2009 issue of ArcNews…

“Throughout the developed world, there is ongoing interest in renewable energy as a replacement for traditional fossil fuel. Wind farms are cropping up around the world, and the sunniest spots are slated for solar power potential, while additional significant strides are being made to expand geothermal, tidal, biomass, and other types of generation. Motives for renewable energy development vary from place to place, but the recurring theme is a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions—a smaller carbon footprint. All agree on the need to tread more lightly, and with GIS technology, the path to renewable energy is becoming clearer.

“The identification of areas technically suitable for renewable generation involves the collection of existing information, such as historical wind speed and direction, terrain and slope information, and solar radiation. Data must be analyzed for currency, accuracy, and completeness. Further data collection may be required.”

• Read the article

These maps show how wind resources in Indiana increase with height.

…from the Spring 2009 issue of ArcNews…

Highlights:

• Using ArcGIS Desktop software, the NREL team can determine the most favorable locations for wind farms.
• GIS-based modeling enables analysis of terrain, which significantly impacts the quality of wind at a particular site.
• The primary audience for these maps is government decision makers.

Read the article

…from Vector One…

“Washington State’s oldest local energy utility, Puget Sound Energy (PSE), adapted quickly with a program that rewards customers with qualifying renewable energy systems. PSE continues to push the envelope for innovative ways of thinking about renewable energy and conservation programs. The utility is recognized by the American Wind Energy Association as the second-largest utility owner of wind energy facilities in the United States and owns two commercial production wind power plants. PSE has garnered national recognition for a variety of energy efficiency achievements recently, including the prestigious platinum-level Energy and Water Management Award by the Secretary of the Navy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 ENERGY STAR for its efforts in energy conservation.

“PSE has been supplying energy to customers for more than 100 years and today serves more than 1 million electric and approximately 750,000 natural gas customers around the Puget Sound region. To meet the electrical energy needs of its customers over the next 20 years, PSE implemented a 2009 integrated resource plan that directs the utility to add 1,100 megawatts (MW) of renewable wind generation and 1,064 MW of efficient energy to its existing generation portfolio of hydroelectric, wind, gas, and coal power plants. As energy efficiency becomes a leading resource addition, the utility has to become more innovative in targeting customers with energy savings potential and increasing their engagement with its energy efficiency programs. Geographic information system (GIS) technology is playing an increasing role in refining PSE’s understanding of its customers and their potential efficiency gains.”

• Read the article

Companies increasingly understand the business benefits of going green—not only from the obvious perspective of operational efficiency, but also from a marketing perspective.  Green is the hot ticket right now, and if you’re green, you’re getting PR and attracting new customers.  “But many organizations don’t know how to begin accurately measuring and managing their environmental impact,” says Ted Cuzzillo, in his article “The Benefits of Going Green,” sas.com magazine, Q4 2008.  “Now there is much more focus on trying to quantify benefits, both in terms of measuring the impact of current practices on the bottom line and in quantifying the future under different scenarios,” said Alyssa Farrell, Marketing Manager for Sustainability Solutions at SAS, interviewed in the same article.

But there’s a lot more to “going green” than installing solar panels on your roof or planting trees to offset your carbon footprint.  As Braden Allenby so succinctly states in his book Reconstructing Earth, “…it could be said that the advances in mathematics that have enabled more efficient routing of vehicles among numerous points are possibly one of the most potent environmental technologies of the last decade. This is not a technology normally recognized by environmentalists and environmental regulators.”

One such technology is geographic information systems (GIS)-based logistics software.  GIS is not a new technology, nor is it a stranger to environmental issues.  GIS traces its roots back to the environmental planning theories developed by seminal landscape architect Ian McHarg back in the 1960s.  It’s now a multi-billion dollar industry, equally at home in environmental domains as it is in such seemingly contradictory applications as defense and business.

In these trying economic times, GIS-based logistics applications are experiencing record growth.  GIS-based logistics software provides the quantified information and analytical capabilities necessary companies are looking for to help them increase the efficiency of fleet vehicles by optimizing standard routes, leading to reduced fuel consumption.  But the benefits to companies go beyond simply “green” benefits; companies using logistic optimization applications also benefit from reduced labor expenditures and fleet size, as well as faster deliveries and more accurate time windows.

Delivery Optimization

The Star Tribune newspaper of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, is using ArcLogistics GIS software from Environmental Systems Research institute, Inc. (ESRI) to route its delivery drops, and the software is projected to save the newspaper more than a half million dollars in the next five years. By employing ArcLogistics in its efforts to serve the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan region, greater Minnesota, and surrounding states, the Star Tribune has found that using GIS technology for intelligent routing has delivered an economic advantage to the company.

Given current economic trends, the company began looking for new areas where the newspaper could save money. Traditionally, the newspaper used wall maps with pushpins to determine delivery routes for single-copy papers. Rerouting was a time- and labor-intensive activity that required three employees from multiple departments to sit in the map room for four hours a day over the course of a month. Determining new routes is a necessity each time one of the seven advertisement zone boundaries is shifted or when a threshold amount of new or removed newspaper drop locations is reached. After reviewing several options to increase the efficiency of delivery routes, the Star Tribune partnered with Truck Dispatching Innovations, an ESRI Business Partner from Chicago, Illinois, to implement ArcLogistics. After a two-week startup period geocoding more than 3,700 delivery drop points and the routes of 39 trucks, employees used GIS to create new routes. These outcomes had many benefits. Using this new methodology, one staff member inputs a list of delivery route changes into ArcLogistics and, in half the time of the traditional method, creates and shares maps displaying new routes. Tribune staff perform what-if scenarios, such as including different ad-zoned papers on the same truck. These reveal route options that could further increase the efficiency of delivery routes.

The Star Tribune expects a payback on its investment in 2.5 months and a five-year net savings of $672,740. This positive return on investment provides evidence showing the success of the venture to the company’s financial director. The Star Tribune analyzed the benefits of its investment in ArcLogistics by measuring fixed and variable costs. Fixed costs include the lease price and maintenance expenses for delivery trucks, as well as the initial cost and yearly maintenance of the software. One variable cost is the number of miles driven, which determines gas costs per route. Another variable cost is the number of hours driven, which determines the wage cost per driver per route. Fixed costs are added to variable costs to determine route costs. Combining cost savings in these four areas shows a more accurate cost savings, rather than just looking at the savings as stand-alone figures. The Star Tribune found significant savings of route costs, including the number of trucks needed, miles driven, and time spent delivering newspapers.

Quantifying Benefits

Large-scale users of ArcLogistics software have shown an average savings of $15 million over traditional manual methods, while other operators have found a 15 to 30 percent inventory reduction by taking corrective action earlier and mobilizing their inventory more effectively. To avoid being overwhelmed by the scale and cost of planning deliveries and operating fleets efficiently, businesses are turning to GIS-based logistics solutions, replacing guesswork with strategy to generate the most efficient routes.

Along with cost reductions of 10 percent in labor and more effective inbound and outbound transportation, companies are also realizing a 5–10 percent revenue enhancement through quickly responding to customers, managing their inventory more efficiently, and being able to reduce price markdowns. A 5 to 15 percent reduction in delivery times gained through route analysis, improved tracking, and the use of real-time data solutions saves these businesses even more.