With the deadline to decarbonise the power grid on the horizon, 3D laser scanning can save valuable time in bringing renewable energy sources online
“I cannot command winds and weather” – Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson, British Royal Navy, 1758-1805.
As much as we marvel at how much has changed in the past three centuries, equally impressive is how little hasn’t.
Horatio Nelson’s words are as true today as when he first uttered them. We have not – as yet – mastered the winds and weather. Nor can we command them.
But, like the brilliant naval tactician he was, we have a growing ability to harness these natural forces to suit our needs. And build the machines and physical structures doing that energy harnessing with the most accurate, most precise, 3D laser scanning hardware and data registration software, which includes 2D/3D drawing and BIM tools.
Just as wind and wave propelled Nelson’s ships, transferring their combined force to his vessel’s forward momentum, today’s burgeoning green economy is achieving a similar aim.
This is especially true as the newly elected Labour government embarks on an ambitious mission to significantly ramp up the country’s green energy output through the creation of Great British Energy, a planned government entity that will rely heavily on offshore/onshore wind capacity, nuclear and solar farms to get the job done. Also, by building organisational expertise, the goal is to reduce project cost and construction risk.
While scepticism abounds as to whether Great British Energy’s state-backed operating model is a help or hindrance or whether it has enough funds to meet its goals (£8.3bn), it’s become a popular talking point in the wake of renewed global instability.
With the need for increased energy independence from foreign suppliers coinciding with the country’s plan to decarbonise the electric grid by 2035, supporters say now is the time the UK must accelerate its grid conversion plans.
Last-mile power pitfalls
Less discussed, however, is just how much ancillary infrastructure and design work will be required to deliver on these promises. And, through this unique public-private partnership (in this first phase Great British Energy will function more as an investment company), the degree of precision measurement needed to ensure these structures get built right, the first time.
For it is in this capacity that terrestrial laser scanners (TLS) like the FARO Focus Premium Laser Scanners and FARO® Orbis™ Mobile Laser Scanner can offer valuable private sector cost, time-saving and project management/oversight assistance.
For the average Briton, the scale of the task at hand is difficult to appreciate. From an infrastructure standpoint alone, what Great British Energy and its private sector partners must accomplish in the next half decade is staggering.
According to consulting firm Oxford Economics, onshore wind capacity would need to more than double, solar power output would need to triple and offshore wind would require a fourfold boost.
As of 2023, the UK had over 11,000 wind turbines (onshore and offshore) with a capacity of 30 gigawatts (GW). While impressive, it’s still only a fraction of the power generation required to supply the UK’s needs with an annual consumption around 266 terawatt-hours (TWh).
In short, thousands of additional wind turbines will have to come online, and soon. The same holds true for solar. Currently there are about 1,000 solar farms in the UK generating 13GW.
Not only that, but these installations must be connected to the existing power grid – a grid originally designed to handle power generated from coal.
For solar and wind, energy storage facilities will need to be built, housing large batteries that can be tapped when it’s dark or when generation levels fall off in winter or when the wind doesn’t blow.
Likewise, there will need to be new transmission lines to transport the energy from where it’s generated to where it’s needed. Solar farms are naturally more common in the country’s sunnier South East and South West, while the greatest wind energy potential is in stormier Scotland and the North and Irish seas.
Often, these projects are in rural, open areas, not always accessible to the grid. New operational buildings might need to be built, roadways may need to be enhanced to carry heavier weight industrial traffic and temporary and permanent housing will be required for the personnel building and overseeing these multi-year projects.
How 3D laser scanning technology can help
With a relatively lean budget, tools like the FARO Focus portfolio of scanners and Orbis can help.
Should Great British Energy and private sector partners begin actual work, Focus can be used to capture as-built data for building information modelling (BIM), industrial facility management and many of the above-mentioned infrastructure projects.
The accurate, complete data creates a strong foundation for conversions of existing property, extensions, space optimisation, structural analysis and maintenance of these structures. GBE’s planned Scotland headquarters, whether in a new building or a repurposed old one, could benefit from such a tool.
Focus can also ensure precise laser scanning throughout the building process, guaranteeing that the final structure fits design intent, minimising risk of deformations and other problems.
The technology can also perform large volume calculations and inspect freeform shape elements and façade components with ease, while the scan data is invaluable for project supervision and collaboration across trades.
Flash Technology™, a new scan mode for the FARO Focus Premium, Premium Max and Core laser scanners, that combines the accuracy of a 3D scan with the speed of a panoramic camera – enabling fast scans in under 30 seconds, is yet another feature that helps bolster its use.
Orbis users have similar advantages. However, with the tools’ lighter weight, greater portability and faster scan time, the SLAM capture device is best suited to analyse progress on a monthly, weekly or even daily basis without disrupting job-site activities.
Orbis, too, has Flash Technology and it allows for stationary scans in just 15 seconds while providing unrivalled detail from a mobile mapping solution.
And with its ability to work underground in difficult, hard-to-access locations, Orbis is particularly useful when any subterranean measurement or tunnelling is required.
Sphere XG, FARO’s digital reality platform, offers automated data processing that provides the ability to compare different datasets (2D drawing, 360 photo, point cloud and model data) from current to previous captured data and also against the design. This ability better enables more informed and immediate decisions to be made regarding issues such as clash detection (reducing downtime) and time lost, rectifying avoidable and often costly mistakes, and saving time and materials.
FARO Blue is all in for UK green
To be sure, technologies like the FARO Focus line of scanners and Orbis (and Sphere XG) won’t solve Great British Energy’s challenges overnight. But it’s worth returning to Horatio Nelson and another one of his more well-known quotes: “Time is everything; five minutes make the difference between victory and defeat.”
Focus and Orbis, working in tandem as a complementary set of tools, depending on the accuracy and speed required per project, can deliver significant time savings, both at the front end of a project, managing that project in real-time, and throughout a structure’s lifecycle.
Incremental gains like this make a difference. And with only a little over 10 years to go until meeting the UK’s 2035 power grid decarbonisation deadline, five minutes saved here and 10 minutes saved there really can be the difference between victory and defeat.
*Please note that this is a commercial profile.
