Towards a Sustainable Future: BIM, Virtual Reality and Simulation in a Giga Project

Sustainable energy is a key factor for the future prosperity and development of societies on our planet. Whereas the focus mostly is on energy production, the distribution of this energy, namely electricity, is crucial and often not perceived as well. In the energy transition of Germany, with a goal of 80% electricity from renewable sources in 2030, the current power grid is not capable of transmitting this amount of renewable electric energy across the country. Thus, a new backbone powerline of about 700 km is planned to transport the energy from wind farms up north to industry and households in the south. The capacity of this power line covers the electricity demand of about 10 million households. In this paper we describe how the integration of BIM, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and simulation is used to plan and optimize a crucial part of this Giga project, a 5.2 km long tunnel during the design-, planning-, and currently pre-construction phase.