November 29th 2022

How Digital Twin technology is helping Glasgow's Pollok Park achieve net-zero by 2030

How Digital Twin technology is helping Glasgow's Pollok Park achieve net-zero by 2030

IES have created a Digital Twin of Glasgow’s Pollok Country Park to support the city’s commitment to reaching Net Zero Carbon by 2030, helping maximise use of the city’s green and blue infrastructure in order to mitigate emissions across the estate.

Utilising the very latest technological advancements, the Digital Twin aims to provide greater understanding of Pollok Country Park’s complex eco-system, helping the Council, citizens and other key stakeholders see first-hand how and where energy is used and generated across the estate.

The Digital Twin is being used to inform decision-making on how to make the park energy independent and take it off-grid, generating energy and heat locally. The Digital Twin has allowed the Council to test out different scenarios virtually to understand the opportunities and limitations of various net zero approaches.

The Digital Twin includes models of all the park’s infrastructure; Pollok House, the Burrell Collection, the Courtyard buildings, Knowehead Lodge and the Police Dog Pound.

A stepped process was taken by IES consultants to show Glasgow City Council how net-zero carbon can be achieved for the park. 

Firstly, a baseline DigitalTwin was created for the estate to show where energy was being used and provide an accurate measurement of the park’s total energy consumption. For three of the buildings, Digital Twins were created using the IESVE, IES’ flagship building performance simulation software, while the remaining two were simulated using the ICL master planning tool, iCD, which enables quick and easy modelling and analysis.

Planned improvement measures were then modelled in the Digital Twin to show their carbon reduction impact. It was shown that once implemented these improvements would result in a 34% carbon reduction across the estate.

The IES network modelling tool iVN was then used to simulate future scenarios for reaching net-zero carbon. It was discovered that complete decarbonisation of the electrical demands could occur from interconnecting all the buildings heat and electrical networks and adding around 4MWh of battery storage and 3000m2 of PV.

Finally, live dashboards were created using IES’ online data analysis platform iSCAN to display the project data and results. These allow the energy, carbon and cost results for each individual building, and site-wide, to be viewed at a glance, with some more detailed analysis present too. Two versions of the dashboards were created: one with a more technical audience in mind, and the other a less-technical version that could potentially be displayed to the public.

The park’s rich energy history developed through the industrial revolution when it became home to a water mill that was first used as a flourmill, then a saw mill and a water turbine power station in the mid-19th century. Currently unused, it is today being considered as part of a sustainable energy solution for the park, with plans to re-install a hydro-electric turbine generating electricity from the river to power the Courtyard buildings. Excess from this turbine could potentially be used for creating hydrogen in the future.

The IES Digital Twin has provided Glasgow City Council with the data and possible solutions to enable the park to meet its net-zero carbon by 2030 commitment.

For more details on this project visit www.iesve.com/pollok-country-park 

You can also sign up for the IES demo Introduction to iVN - local energy decarbonization on 8th December 2022 at 1pm GMT to find out about our latest enhancements to this tool.