Finding an optimal site for a solar or wind farm or the best route for an energy pipeline or electric transmission requires geographic data. Understanding the geotechnical, environmental, cultural, community, societal, jurisdictional, infrastructural, and climate implications and restrictions to siting and routing requires a deep level of location intelligence about a potential site or route. Location Intelligence is informed by geo-data that is meticulously curated to allow renewable prospectors to bring a site from need to concept to reality. Deploying renewable energy sources is dominating the infrastructural, political, and cultural landscape in North America. This presentation shows the end-to-end path that the data takes from the source, through the system, into the Pivvot Platform, to the reality of building a viable renewable site or energy pipeline and how FME is instrumental to that process almost every step of the way.

1. Bring life to data to make better decisions
Working Forward: From Data to Location Intelligence
for Renewables Siting and Routing

2. Presenter
The
Peak
of
Data
Integration
20
23
Peter
Veenstra
Director of Data Architecture
Pivvot/Terracon 32 years in geospatial industry - analyst, programmer,
architect, consultant, director
Location Intelligence, Software as a Service
Company (4 years, 27 people, remote)
Geotechnical, Environmental, Facilities,
Materials Engineering Company (50+ years,
5000+ people, 175 offices/remote)

3. ThankYou!
Brett Holmyard
Dean Hintz
Emily Prosperiporta
Don & Dale/Safe/ConTerra

4. The
Peak
of
Data
Integration
20
23
Bringing life to data to make better
decisions
1. Decisions lead to Results
2. Results are gathered from Information
3. Information is created by Data
4. Data is curated from Sources
Image Source: www.pixabay, https://www.pipingengineer.org/pipeline-earth-work/

5. The
Peak
of
Data
Integration
20
23
FME brings life to our data, our
platform and our data brings
users to making better
decisions

6. The
Peak
of
Data
Integration
20
23
Pipelines and Electric Transmission Routing
Siting Renewables
How to do it quickly with the best data
● Highly competitive market
● Land acquisition
● Public Opinion
● Political polarization Image Source:
www.shawlocal.com/northwest-herald
https://www.wkbn.com/
info@energynews.us

7. The
Peak
of
Data
Integration
20
23
Routing and Siting require location
intelligence
Location Intelligence requires data
• The geospatial data stack
• Classification - Boundary, Geotechnical, Hydrology,
Land Use, property ownership, energy,
infrastructure, jurisdiction, community, society,
ecology, weather
• https://pivvot.com/data/
8 years in
the
making
123
Spatial
Data
Layers
½ Billion+
records in
PostGIS
AWS
180 Data
Agencies
4000+
Data
Sources
FME Flow
Ingest,
Curate,
QA/QC
Row
Level
Metadata
30 Day /
90 Day
Refresh
Cycle

8. The
Peak
of
Data
Integration
20
23
The data needs to be right …
Sourcing
Research
Curation Aggregation QA/QC Publication Consumption
Requirements

9. The
Peak
of
Data
Integration
20
23 A lot of workbenches …
• All loaded into FME Flow Hosted
• 36 Repositories
• 850+ Workbenches

10. The
Peak
of
Data
Integration
20
23 Source Mapping, Transformation, and Classification

11. The
Peak
of
Data
Integration
20
23 QA/QC • All loaded into FME Flow - Hosted
• 36 Repositories
• 839+ Workbenches

12. The
Peak
of
Data
Integration
20
23 QA/QC - Metadata

13. The
Peak
of
Data
Integration
20
23 QA/QC - Classification

14. The
Peak
of
Data
Integration
20
23 Aggregation - Smart Parcels

15. The
Peak
of
Data
Integration
20
23 Landcover/DEM to Tiles to POSTGIS

16. The
Peak
of
Data
Integration
20
23
Bringing the data to life …

17. The
Peak
of
Data
Integration
20
23 Raster to H3
4
7
10
● H3 - Level 4 =
7,705
● H3 - Level 7 =
2,642,815
● H3 - Level 10 =
906,485,545
● H3 - Level 11 =
2,991,492,000

18. The
Peak
of
Data
Integration
20
23 Raster to H3
4 7
10 Plus Raster
● H3 - Level 10
● Roughly 20 Pixels
● Show the:
○ Max
○ Min
○ Mean
○ Mode
○ Median
● Go farther
○ Coverage Map
○ Cultural/Historical Resources
Heat Map
○ 110+ data layers
○ Built for AI

19. The
Peak
of
Data
Integration
20
23 Route PLAE → Routing → Best Route

20. The
Peak
of
Data
Integration
20
23 Composite Parcels → Bigger Solar Sites
800+
1618
987
700+
2068
1229
600+
2738
1583
500+
3735
2109
400+
5404
3176
300+
8799
5053
200+
17125
9850
CountSize
Composite
Tax

21. The
Peak
of
Data
Integration
20
23 Composite Parcels → Better Solar Sites
142 2231

22. The
Peak
of
Data
Integration
20
23 Composite Parcels → Better Solar Sites

23. The
Peak
of
Data
Integration
20
23 Composite Parcels → Better Solar Sites

24. The
Peak
of
Data
Integration
20
23 Composite Parcels → Better Solar Sites

25. The
Peak
of
Data
Integration
20
23 Composite Parcels → Better Solar Sites

26. The
Peak
of
Data
Integration
20
23
Vision of Success:
Prospect for better routes/sites
Make a data-driven decision to remove
uncertainty & be better informed

27. Resources
● www.safe.com
● www.aws.com
● www.pivvot.com

28. ThankYou!
pveenstra@pivvot.com
X @PCGVeenstra
LinkedIn