Meeting the UK’s bold target of an 80% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 will require widespread changes in the way that we generate and use electricity. Milton Keynes – and Virtual Viewing – is at the forefront of some of these exciting and innovative changes.
Through the MKSmart2020 partnership, we are working with E.ON Central Networks, the University Centre Milton Keynes, Milton Keynes Partnership, Milton Keynes Council, the Open University and Cranfield University to help Milton Keynes through an evolution of the way that we all use energy. This will include SmartGrids, electric vehicles, ground heat sources, intelligent appliances, and integrated energy generation systems (wind farms, solar panels, advanced recycling plants) – and all of this work is being undertaken in conjunction with Milton Keynes Council’s Low Carbon Living Programme.
The MKSmart2020 bid for funding from the Low Carbon Networks Fund would see Milton Keynes transformed – in 2012 – into a low carbon example of how we might all be living in 2020. With the help of the Milton Keynes community, Central Networks will explore how best to deliver reliable and cost-effective smart grid technology to support the introduction of low carbon technology at home and in businesses. MKSmart2020 will showcase Milton Keynes as a leading low carbon city, delivering all the environmental benefits that that entails and attracting innovative, green industries and companies to the city. A number of initiatives have already been confirmed as part of the programme including confirmed funding from Plugged-in-Places for electric vehicle infrastructure through the Department of Transport and provision of land for 1,200 new build low carbon homes.
A key element of the MKSmart2020 model is the ‘SmartGrid’, a fully functioning low carbon electricity network that will provide the foundation that underpins the transformation to a truly low carbon city. To help explain the concept of SmartGrids and to support promotion of the bid, Virtual Viewing was commissioned to produce a two-minute video.
The video both explains and demonstrates the SmartGrid model as a viable solution to a world that will, without consumer education, increasing demand for energy. Integrating increased monitoring, measurement and automation of patterns of energy demand with new, more sustainable methods of electricity generation, SmartGrids provide an alternative future model compared to the cost (both financial and environmental) of simply extending existing networks.
The video – scripted, modelling and rendered by Virtual Viewing’s 3d modelling team – draws on the power of 3d models and animations not only to provide an engaging method for conveying a complex message, but also to demonstrate – in this case, in a deliberately friendly ‘cartoon’ style – the workings of models, environments or processes that do not yet exist in reality.
>> See the full video in our 3d Showcase
