SYNOPTRA

Electric energy is the basis of our industrialized world and basis of our wealth. Ensuring the supply is the main task of power authorities. A reliable and continuous supply can on the long run only be guaranteed if the high voltage grid is renewed or expanded. As a consequence new overhead lines have to be built. This is becoming more and more difficult as the population concerned refuses to accept such an impact on their natural landscape.

It is therefore crucial to reduce this impact to a strict minimum by an intelligent planning process. Basis of this process is a method to calculate "visibility" which lets you compare different variants of the overhead line. Such a method has been developed at Saarland University and is now integrated in the software suite SYNOPTRA.

Apart from the task of minimizing visible impact of the line there is a need of avoiding populated areas and nature reserves. If one succeeds in tracing the line along existing courses of streets, railways or existing overhead lines or crossing only industrial areas it is probable to get the approval for constructing the line (see [Obermaier]Obermaier, Jarass, Gröhn
Hochspannungsleitungen
Springer Verlag 1985
Berlin, Heidelberg, New York ).
At the same time the electric utility has to take care of restricting the costs. In summary there are three different optimisation criteria the planner must consider:

• The overhead line should have minimal visual impact on the landscape.
• The overhead line should be cost-effective.
• Most important: local authorities must give their approval for construction of the line.

The task of finding an appropriate (or the best) variant that takes care of all three aspects and of course considering the whole geographic conditions (from contour lines to course of streets, railways or position of inhabited areas and forests etc.) is a very difficult one! It is even impossible with conventional methods as visibility (or visual impact on the line) can only be correctly considered if there is a method for calculation because:

• The planner has no information about the visibility of a pylon seen from a certain observer point.
• It is very difficult to grab all information about approval ability when tracing the line.
• Considering contour lines is very difficult. But it is necessary as it impacts e.g. costs of line that depend on the length but also on the heights of the pylons.

For solving this problem the software suite SYNOPTRA was developed. It enables the planner to consider all optimisation criteria and disposes of an accepted method to calculate visibility of the line. Different variants can be created - each of them having different strengths (most cost-effective, lowest visible, highest approval ability) - and compared with one another. SYNOPTRA proposes the best suited based on weights for each optimisation criterion.

When using SYNOPTRA for your planning you will be able to prove that the variant you selected is for example the less visible, This gives you higher chances to get approval for the construction of the line! Another great feature implemented in SYNOPTRA is a landscape generator which enables you to create photo-realistic images of the planned overhead line. You just define observer position and line of sight and synoptraIMAGE generates images - and even films for you. This is used for giving the authorities and the population concerned a visual impression of how the planned overhead line could look like - thus leading to an objectification of the debate.