Your alternative energy infrastructure projects are far too expensive to make random decisions on siting. For many reasons – not the least of which are cost, efficiency and productivity – siting should be as exact as the science behind alternative energy itself.
Visual assessments don’t cut it. Paper maps aren’t efficient. Most online maps don’t offer the breadth of information needed to make informed decisions.
Fortunately, technological tools have been developed to help alternative energy providers decide the best locations for their wind turbines, solar panel fields, geothermal plants or biomass facilities. These Web-based tools can supply information quickly, sparing the energy company expensive, time-consuming field and document research and data analysis.
A geographical information system (GIS) is one powerful, quickly developing technology that is making a major impact on renewable energy industries. GIS integrates hardware, software and data for capturing, managing, analyzing and displaying all forms of geographically referenced information.
With GIS, companies can view, understand, question, interpret and visualize data in many ways that reveal relationships, patterns and trends in the form of maps, globes, reports and charts.
It is considered the go-to technology for making the best decisions about siting. That is because of the abundance of information it provides about local land use, population density, wind and weather patterns, existing infrastructure, natural resource extraction, environmental assessments and more. Plus, the information is provided quickly. GIS helps energy companies understand what is happening, plus what is expected to happen, at a specific geographical space.
Once that data is obtained, project planners can make the best decisions on where to site expensive wind farms, solar panel fields, geothermal plants and biomass facilities. GIS helps energy companies conduct site selection as efficiently as possible. Because the companies can show the best possible site has been selected, the technology can also help in securing critical project financing.
geoAMPS offers software solutions to assist in the development, construction and ongoing operation of renewable energy projects. One of its suite of software products isaltAMPS, which offers end-to-end management of those projects.
altAMPS provides industry-leading Web-based tools, such as lease management, royalty payment calculator, payment tracker and scheduler and workflow management. It complies with processes unique to renewable energy companies. There is the added capability to access information through detached tools, GIS maps and smart devices. No longer do project managers have to wait to share information with employees in the field. Through mobile technology provided by altAMPS, that information is available at the push of a button. Project information, development and workflows are managed more efficiently.
Companies utilizing altAMPS have the option of combining that powerful tool with the geoAMPS GIS viewer, gisAMPS. This GIS viewer provides an intuitive geospatial view that is compliant with popular mapping technology, such as Esri, Google Maps and Bing Maps. In fact, geoAMPS is a Silver Tier Partner of the Esri Partner Network.
gisAMPS can be leveraged to integrate with your current system to add mapping capability. It provides dashboard-like capability to monitor alternative energy projects and assets through color-coded maps and layers. As such, gisAMPs allows real-time analysis of project data.
gisAMPS improves the efficiency of time-consuming processes, such as project siting, route planning and selection, cost analysis, environmental assessments, 3-D visualization and project management.
“With Web-based editing capability, gisAMPS can greatly reduce your need for software deployment and increase efficiencies of any spatial editing,” Yogesh Khandelwal, President and Chief Executive Officer of geoAMPS, said.
For more information about how geoAMPS can save your organization up to 35 percent in project costs through efficiencies, call 614-389-4871 and ask to speak to Guy Allen, Business Development Director.
Dan Liggett is Communications and Public Relations Manager for geoAMPS, a software company in the Columbus, OH area that specializes in software solutions to manage land rights and infrastructure assets. For more information, call 614-389-4871 or visit www.geoamps.com.
This article also appears on:
Renewable Energy World
The Energy Collective
