Developing and implementing a Local Area Energy Plan as an appointed consultant can often be challenging and time-consuming without access to accurate energy network data and granular local area data.
Many consultants will also often find that basic data modelling can be extremely repetitive across multiple projects without the right tools, and supporting local authorities to visualise the plans in a clear way can be equally as difficult and costly.
Working together with consultants appointed to support Local Area Energy Plans, Advanced Infrastructure’s LAEP+ tool is enabling real-time collaboration between local authorities, distribution network operators and local communities.
LAEP+ is a collaborative web-based mapping and design tool that helps Consultants, Local Authorities and Distribution Network Operators come together to plan and develop new energy systems such as power, heat and transport.
Web based and cloud based enables the data to be kept up to date, shared across different groups as well as it being visualised, over-layed and brought together in one place.
By bringing LAEP+ to the market, our aim is to support those responsible in transitioning to renewable energy faster, cost-effectively and collaboratively from project inception, design, delivery and final implementation.
Feedback from colleagues across the Oxfordshire local authorities has been hugely positive – simply having a single point of access to the range of data being made available is in itself really valuable but combining that with the filtering and analytical features available on the platform takes us many steps further down the line to understanding and being able to plan for the changes we know we need to make as we transition to a net zero energy system across Oxfordshire.
Project RESOP (Regional Energy System Optimisation Planning) aims to take a ‘whole system’ approach, by drawing together data from multiple sources into a single tool that can be used to plan retrofit and roll out of low carbon technologies (LCTs) like electric vehicle charge points.
In November 2021, following a public tender process, Advanced Infrastructure was appointed to provide an energy mapping tool for project LEO utilising Advanced Infrastructure’s LAEP+ software service. This provided an excellent opportunity to test and validate the value of geospatial solutions for local area energy planning.
In June 2021, Advanced Infrastructure and EB Charging were awarded funding from the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles to specify and build a cloud-based siting tool for EV charge points. The output was EV Site, an EV focussed instance of our planning tool LAEP+. Advanced Infrastructure’s Head of Product, Lily Cairns Haylor, discusses the challenges of siting EV charge points at scale and the ways digital approaches might accelerate the tricky process.
