Green Cat Renewables


Customer

Green Cat Renewables have been developing and building renewable projects in Scotland since 2005. Based across Scotland with a 70 strong dedicated team providing a flexible range of support services to renewable energy developers throughout entire projects, from site selection through to commissioning.

The Requirement

Green Cat need to quickly produce visuals whilst on-site to inform site design and viewpoint selection for their projects.  In addition, high quality visuals are required for assessment in three areas: landscape and visual, cultural and heritage and residential amenity.  Many projects are in remote locations so return visits for new layouts can increase development time and budgets.

The Solution

In July 2014, Green Cat integrated the True View Visuals (TVV) tools into their business for landscape and visual assessment.  Green Cat need to ensure quality photography is captured first time at multiple viewpoints. TVV helps to ensure there is no foreground clutter in the images and automatically records required metadata.  Back in the office, TVV is used to recreate photomontages as design layouts evolve – without the need to revisit the site.  For the first time, they have an effective way to create high quality photomontages for Residential Amenity Assessment and Culture & Heritage viewpoints. At all stages of the assessment process TVV helps communicate design and inform decisions made by Green Cat Renewables, their clients and Local Authorities they interact with.

Green Cat Renewables now assess the impact of solar projects using new True View Visual capabilities

During summer 2015, Green Cat increased their solar assessment workload. Existing tools did not provide a high enough quality output for solar visualisation. TVV was identified as a production tool for their solar projects. The True View Visuals team worked closely with Green Cat in order to add new functions to the software and tailored these to meet specific requirements.  Green Cat determined the model dimensions and textures required for their solar visuals.  Green Cat and their clients are some of the first beneficiaries of the new capabilities that have been added to TVV. The solar visuals created have been used within planning submissions during 2015.

The solar domain has allowed us to produce visualisations from a single platform, instead of combining a number of graphics packages, significantly reducing the time taken to get the end product. The quality of the model has improved significantly following our input and fast follow-up from the TVV team”
Rob Collin, Green Cat Renewables

 

The Benefits

True View Visuals helps Green Cat to inform and communicate visual impact within their organisation and externally with clien­ts and Local Authorities.  The viability of Wind and Solar projects is assessed faster, enabling increased business. Accurate viewpoint selection lessens on-site time and removes the need for repeat site-visits. Furthermore, quality outputs from TVV can be used across the lifecycle of the planning process, including final submission.  Green Cat have also been able to go on-site and show planning committees exactly what the planned development will look like, from any location.

Green Cat Renewables have been integral to the design and growth of TVV, and have benefited by being able to assess projects faster.

The videomontages produced by TrueViewVisuals are not only innovative, but look stunning also. The HD video allows for a greater appreciation of a development site, giving new perspectives and a realism that cannot be paralleled with static photography.

Alasdair Warnock, Green Cat Renewables