GEMS

About the project

Eurus requested IX Renewables to monitor the permits (Dutch: vergunningen) around their wind farms, to be up to date in case there are any issues that could influence the production. IX Renewables developed a tool to collect all permits in a buffer area around the wind farm, and to represent them visually on a map. Furthermore, detailed information about each permit is available in an elaborate excel list, stating the kind of permit, the corresponding wind park. With this information, IX Renewables can check whether these permits are likely to have an impact on the energy production of the wind farm and if it requires some actions to be performed. Furthermore, it can be checked if noise emission and shadow effects need to be considered for the erection of new buildings.

Assessment of permits around wind farms

The information for the permits is available online via an application programming interface (API) from the Dutch government. Since the location of each wind turbine is known, a buffer area can be projected around the whole windfarm. The permits in this buffer area are collected and can be filtered based on the wind farm and type of permit.

GIS Visualization

For the visualization in a geoinformation system (GIS), the turbines are projected on the map, and a buffer area is drawn around each turbine, which is merged to one buffer area per wind park. The permits collected in the first step are cleaned and georeferenced. The output can then be saved and used in any GIS tool to visualize it.

Reporting

For a general overview, the permits found are collected and supplemented with additional information about each permit. The entries can be filtered on each feature, such as wind park, closest distance to wind turbine or municipality. Furthermore, it contains information about the following steps to be taken by Eurus.