Find usable ground and the owners to call
Solar and wind development starts with screening raw land for the constraints that kill a project: steep slope, poor aspect, weak soils, flood, wetlands, and distance to a viable interconnection. Smart Site Plan stacks the public constraint layers, parcels, and ownership in one browser map so your origination team can shortlist sites and pull a landowner outreach list in an afternoon.
Real Energy work over Maricopa County, AZ, captured in the product
The old way
Screening a county means exporting flood, soils, wetlands, and parcels from separate portals into a folder, hand-stitching them in a desktop GIS, and requesting ownership from the county clerk one parcel at a time. By the time the map is built, the option window on the good parcels has closed.
With Smart Site Plan
Screen land for solar and wind from the desk
The data, already on the map
Drawn from 20 million open datasets, one click each. No agency portal hunting, no format wrangling.
Workflows
How Energy work gets done
End to end, in the browser, on one map.
Solar greenfield constraint screen
- 1. Open Data
Add parcels, FEMA NFHL flood zones, NWI wetlands, SSURGO soils, and USGS contours scoped to the target county view.
- 2. Smart Query
Filter parcels to those above your minimum acreage and inside the right zoning and land-cover classes.
- 3. Draw
Trace the developable envelope on each shortlisted parcel, keeping clear of the mapped flood and wetland footprints, and read its usable area live.
- 4. Property data
Pull owner name, mailing address, and last sale for the shortlisted parcels to seed the outreach list.
- 5. Share
Send the origination lead and land team a live link to the shortlist map.
Wind site slope and access review
- 1. Open Data
Load USGS contours and slope plus land use / land cover over the ridge or plateau under consideration.
- 2. Measure
Check grade and elevation along proposed turbine pad and crane-path lines to flag sections that exceed access limits.
- 3. Draw
Lay out turbine positions, access roads, and gen-tie centerlines with live length and area readouts.
- 4. Export
Export the layout as DXF and KML on Pro for the civil engineer and the interconnection filing.
Landowner outreach packet
- 1. Property data
Look up ownership, mailing address, lot dimensions, and valuation for each shortlisted parcel.
- 2. Style
Color parcels by outreach status and measured usable acres so the call list reads at a glance.
- 3. Measure
Measure each parcel's road frontage and its distance to the planned gen-tie route to anchor the option terms.
- 4. Share
Publish a viewer link so partners and counsel review the assembled package.
What you can do
Stack the constraint layers over a search area
Drop FEMA NFHL flood zones, NWI wetlands, USGS contours, and SSURGO soils onto the same view, scoped to your target territory. Four portal downloads and a reprojection job become one map.
Shortlist parcels and measure the usable ground
Use Smart Query to filter parcels by lot size, zoning, and land-cover class, then read the flood and wetland layers right on top of each candidate. Draw the developable envelope inside the mapped constraints and read its area live, so you carry a defensible usable-acres figure per parcel before anyone drives the site.
Pull a landowner outreach list
Property data returns owner name, mailing address, lot dimensions, valuation, and last sale across 40+ fields for the parcels that survive screening. Your acquisition agents start cold outreach from real owner records without waiting on county clerk requests.
Lay out arrays and ROW corridors
Draw candidate array blocks, access roads, and gen-tie centerlines directly on the parcel with live length and area readouts, and check grade against USGS elevation as you go. You hand the civil team a footprint that already respects setbacks and slope limits.
The capabilities Energy teams lean on
Constraint layers in one map
Flood, wetlands, soils, slope, and parcels come from public sources you already trust, stacked over your search area without four separate portal downloads.
Owner records for outreach
Property data turns screened parcels into a real call list with owner name, mailing address, and last sale, so acquisition starts the same day.
Slope, aspect, and usable ground
Smart Query, elevation and grade readouts, and a drawn developable envelope let you screen each parcel for slope, aspect, and the area that can actually hold an array or turbine pad.
Shared screening map
Live share links keep origination, land, and engineering on one map as parcels move through the pipeline.
In practice
Screening a 1,200-acre West Texas solar target
A site origination lead opens Pecos County, Texas, stacks parcels, USGS 3DEP slope, NLCD land cover, and NWI wetlands over the view, then uses Smart Query to keep parcels above 40 acres in the right land-cover class. On the top candidates she draws the developable envelope clear of the steep-slope and wetland footprints, reads its usable area live, and pulls owner name and mailing address from Property data for the leading eight parcels. She shares a live link with the land team that morning, and acquisition begins outreach before lunch.
What changes
- Shortlist a county of parcels and measure usable ground in an afternoon instead of weeks of portal stitching
- Walk into landowner outreach with owner names and mailing addresses already in hand
- Catch flood, wetland, and slope fatal flaws before spending on a survey or site visit
- Hand civil and interconnection teams an array footprint that already respects setbacks and grade
Energy, answered
Yes. Open Data carries FEMA NFHL flood zones, NWI wetlands, USGS contours and slope, and USDA SSURGO soils, and each adds to the same map scoped to your search area, with no separate downloads or reprojection.
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