Keywords
energy resources, gis, global database, modelling
Start Date
1-7-2008 12:00 AM
Abstract
The future development of our energy system is still unclear. This uncertainty isbased on numerous aspects. In addition to the currently most relevant climate debate thiswill also be a question of available technologies as well as of available resources. Hencethe global energy resources and their distribution will be one of the most influencingfactors in the design of our future energy system. To model and administrate global energypotentials a geographical (GEO) database has been implemented. The intention toimplement such a global GEO database is based on the fact that numerous aspectsdescribing our energy system rely on spatial characteristics. Particularly renewable energyresources depend on numerous datasets, the most important ones are topography, landcover, climate, population distribution and precipitation. With respect to these datasets thetheoretical and furthermore useable global potentials of renewable energy carriers wereestimated, in this paper the computation of wind power is shown exemplarily. Whenmodelling renewable energy potentials special attention has to be paid to the fact thatrenewable energy potentials are often not additive, what means that the land surface is onlyavailable once and therefore several potentials exclude the option to yield another potentialon the same area. For the estimation of the highest possible energy potential on a certainarea, a competition analysis regarding the utilization of the land surface was carried out.
Implementation of a GEOdatabase to administrate global energy resources
The future development of our energy system is still unclear. This uncertainty isbased on numerous aspects. In addition to the currently most relevant climate debate thiswill also be a question of available technologies as well as of available resources. Hencethe global energy resources and their distribution will be one of the most influencingfactors in the design of our future energy system. To model and administrate global energypotentials a geographical (GEO) database has been implemented. The intention toimplement such a global GEO database is based on the fact that numerous aspectsdescribing our energy system rely on spatial characteristics. Particularly renewable energyresources depend on numerous datasets, the most important ones are topography, landcover, climate, population distribution and precipitation. With respect to these datasets thetheoretical and furthermore useable global potentials of renewable energy carriers wereestimated, in this paper the computation of wind power is shown exemplarily. Whenmodelling renewable energy potentials special attention has to be paid to the fact thatrenewable energy potentials are often not additive, what means that the land surface is onlyavailable once and therefore several potentials exclude the option to yield another potentialon the same area. For the estimation of the highest possible energy potential on a certainarea, a competition analysis regarding the utilization of the land surface was carried out.
