In 2014, the State of Hawaii and the U.S. Department of Energy committed to the goal of achieving a 100% renewable energy portfolio by the year 2045. Energy planning models are often complex with many intricacies and the full impacts are not always clearly understood by stakeholders, and especially the general public, who do not have experience with the models. Various scenarios of achieving the 100% renewable goal are explained through long highly detailed reports called the Power Supply Improvement Plans (PSIP), provided by Hawaiian Electric Company, that can be thousands of pages long. These reports are to aid stakeholders in understanding the various effects decisions will have on Hawaii’s future and the environment.
To help stakeholders understand these important reports the Hawaii State Energy Office (HSEO) recruited the help of LAVA to develop the Hawaii Advanced Visualization Environment Nexus (HAVEN). HAVEN is a tool that allows users to visualize and compare scenarios through charts and maps in a customizable visualization sandbox. HAVEN was designed as a web application to allow stakeholders the ability access the information from anywhere but it was also developed particularly to leverage the capabilities of the Cyber-enabled Collaborative Analysis Navigation and Observation Environment (CyberCANOE).
