Sustainable Energy At Airports

In the previous post, I looked into a few of the existing software tools that can help with sustainable energy planning. RETScreen is one of these and it is a very powerful system. Its power lies in the vast collection of data that it centralises and makes available for feasibility analysis. It is described as a feasibility tool because it provides enough information to allow preliminary decisions to be made about potential projects.

I mentioned the idea of integrating a GIS-based front end with RETScreen.  RETScreen is implemented as a series of Excel spreadsheets.  There is no API provided, although it is possible to programmatically integrate with Excel via its COM automation object model.  This works fine for desktop solutions, but is not recommended for server solutions.

Unfortunately, a server-side solution is what I have in mind, so it is a matter of waiting for the API to be developed - this has been promised for the next version.  In the meantime, I can elaborate more on my overall system design and delve into the GIS framework side.

My design for the tool consists of a web-based GIS front-end that allows the user to select a geographical area - perhaps a rooftop space, or some vacant land, and calculate the area.  This then gets passed to RETScreen, along with the coordinates of the location, and a selection from the extensive RETScreen product database of the type of solar product for installation (eg. Mitsubishi poly-SI 120W panels).

It is then possible to return to the user the estimated yearly kWh output as calculated by RETScreens energy model.  I would also like to return estimated Greenhouse Gas emissions avoided (t CO2-e) and perhaps some reference comparisons such as number of average houses powered by the selected configuration.

As I pointed out, this tool fits in the planning/pre-feasibility analysis space.  Why is this useful?  Well the answer boils down to project characteristics.  I think that when it comes to a project like a major rooftop solar installation, construction is the easy part.  It is actually getting the organisation to the point of making a decision and signing off on the go-ahead that is the hard part.

A tool like this is perfect for helping communicate the vision.  It can be used by project champions to reinforce their convictions and they can use it to get the buy-in of other project stakeholders.  A simple web-based application is perfect as it can be accessed from conference rooms with network connection to give presentations, or simply from the desktop.

I have chosen Google Maps for the GIS layer of my prototype of this tool.  It has a great API, and is fully web accessible. It allows me to host the maps from within my own web page and I have total control over the UI.  The framework that I have commenced building can be viewed here.

I am now at the point of waiting for the RETScreen API to be released.  I am hopeful that it will be architected in the form of a web service similar to Google Maps API.  In the meantime I plan to do a post on the weather database contained within RETScreen and look to an existing web-based interface into this data hosted by NASA.