2022 User Conference Highlights for the Renewables Community
First, thank you all so much for a fantastic week in San Diego at the 2022 Esri User Conference! Much can be said about meeting together as a GIS community in one place and at one time, but every minute lived up to the conference theme of Mapping Common Ground and how the geographic approach can help create better understanding and agreed-upon solutions. This year’s User Conference had many offerings available which included user presentation sessions, special interest group meetings and socials. It was a pleasure to hear first-hand about the exciting work being done to solve unique business challenges, and to exchange ideas, knowledge, and common workflows within the renewable energy community.
For those who could not attend this year, hopefully you were able to join us digitally for the plenary and for some of the technical sessions. Below is a quick summary of some of the highlights specific to Renewable Energy:
Special Achievement in GIS Award
Congratulations to EDF Renewables Inc the winner of the Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) Award in Renewables!
EDF Renewables transformed their GIS practices to develop a company-wide mapping and data solution to better-deliver authoritative geospatial information across departments. The GIS team developed a stable platform based on ArcGIS Enterprise & Desktop, by gathering needs from business users, customizing the structure and content to meet their needs, and creating a support, training, and regular follow up workflow system. This solved many of the data access issues that were previously part of their GIS system.
Additional efforts included centralizing servers for ArcGIS use, creating a GIS library for data access, integrating proprietary and subscription data, collaborating with ESRI to develop customized tools, and automating workflows. Custom-scripted geoprocessing services and widgets, and Web App-Builder are regularly used to deploy custom mapping applications for a variety of teams and uses.
The EDF Renewables team is truly an inspiration for the Renewable Energy Community and we are thrilled to see your hard work be recognized as it deserves.
Map Gallery Awards
- Atlas of Energy Transition authored by Ginny Mason, Josephine Sajbel, Andrew Critchlow, Henry Edwardes-Evans, S&P Global Commodity Insights – First Place in Map Series or Atlas & Winner for Best Cartography
User Presentations
Esri would like to thank all the presentations that freely shared their work and enthusiasm with the GIS community.
- Grazia Pannarale from Enel Green Power developed a semi-automatic GIS enabled Environmental Analysis tool aimed at establishing a standardized quantitative & qualitative approach to carry out spatial risk analysis pertaining to the environmental key performance factors. Titled: Enel GIS Tool for Environmental Analysis in Renewable Project Assessment
- Sean Ireland from Ramboll focused on the Spatial Data Analysis to Inform Offshore Wind Infrastructure Development. During project design, GIS is used to visualize geophysical and geotechnical data to inform decision support models. All GIS data are published to our enterprise portal environment for a single source of truth that ensures accurate and dynamic collaboration within project team
- Ross O’Connell from MaREI at University College Cork: presented A Techno-Economic Web-GIS for Assessing Site Viability of Ocean Energy Projects introducing GIS to Techno-Economics addressed the issue of limited geospatial information as a factor for both site selection and feasibility of Ocean Energy projects
- Dan Meehan from Horizon Geospatial and Juan Tori-Killion from Prospect 14 came together and built tasks to streamline and automate workflows into simple user interfaces. The geospatially enabled tools would cut down search and site evaluation time, and allowed potential project sites to be sorted easily. Presented as A Geospatial Platform for Renewable Development and Asset Management
- Dr. Ahmed Alzahrani from Claremont Graduate University shared his study that investigated the solar-energy adoption at the residential level by operationalizing spatial and nonspatial factors related to homeowners. The study's output is an interactive GIS-based web application that supports the decision-making process of stakeholders (e.g., policymakers, solar firms, utility companies and nonprofit organizations)
Renewables Special Interest Group Meeting
Members of the renewable energy community were invited to get together to discuss opportunities, trends, and business challenges facing the community today. The Esri Renewable Energy team discussed resources available to the community, such as: licensing help, professional services, change management, community networking, and GIS support with specific project initiatives. Craig Weber of EDF Renewables accepted the SAG Award for Renewable Energy on behalf of his team and gave a speech about their work in GIS throughout the previous years to deliver authoritative geospatial information across departments. Two leaders of the community (Lisa Tunnell of Clearway Energy and Michelle Pruse of Pattern Energy) served on a renewable energy panel to share how their career in renewable energy began, how they are currently using GIS at their respective companies, what business challenges they address using GIS, and shared exciting GIS use cases emerging in the renewable energy industry. Finally, Andrew Norris of Nextera Energy shared his experience on the PUG (Petroleum User Group) steering committee and discussed next steps on creating a formal Esri Renewable Energy group starting with the formation of a voluntary steering committee.
Panelists included:
Lisa Tunnell, Clearway Energy
Michelle Pruse, Pattern Energy
Energy Social
Members of the petroleum, pipeline, and renewables community convened at the Marriot Coronado Terrace. With food, drinks, and music provided by a live band, it was a perfect opportunity to network with industry peers across the energy sector and share stories, ask questions, or simply catch up.
Special thanks to our sponsors!
Stay connected with the Esri Renewables Community beyond the UC: Esri’s Renewables Community
For anyone interested in joining the Renewables Steering Community please contact Alessandra Millican at amillican@esri.com