Smart Sites automates the process of finding groups of adjacent parcels that collectively meet your required acreage footprint, while meeting other criteria you specify. This saves you time from having to manually prospect for combinations of parcels that could work for your project. Instead of clicking through individual parcels, this feature:
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Locates clusters of adjacent land parcels.
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Ensures collective parcels match your target criteria, including acreage and parcel count, proximity to transmission lines, buildable area, and more.
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Highlights potential sites that can be saved as projects, or further assessed in reports.
In this article, we’ll review:
Please share your feedback on this feature to help make it better! Contact us through the Feedback button in Smart Sites or email Support.
When is Smart Sites Right for Your Project?
Large projects often require multiple adjacent parcels of buildable land, which can be challenging to find in the contiguous United States. Smart Sites solves this by automatically assembling parcel configurations that meet your specific acreage and other criteria.
Smart Sites works best for:
- Large projects on contiguous parcels: Ideal for utility-scale solar, storage, data centers, nuclear, or other large project types.
- Challenging geographic regions: States where land is scarce and parcels are smaller.
- Complex topography: Areas where environmental constraints make finding large, flat sites difficult.
How to Use Smart Sites
Add Filterable Criteria
You can access Smart Sites by first selecting the Map from the top navigation bar in Transect. From here, you’ll:
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Select the Smart Sites icon
in the upper right corner of the Map. - Define your site’s preferred criteria—minimum size, maximum size, and the site location (city, county, or state).
- Next, select from the following optional criteria:
- Proximity:
- Parcels:
- Buildable Area:
- Proximity:
- When finished, select Find Sites.
Review Potential Sites
Once Smart Sites identifies candidate sites, you can:
- Zoom Out to see all the sites within your search area.
- Sort by size, buildable acreage, parcels, landowners, distance to transmission lines or substations.
- Load a New Batch of Sites to bring in more sites (if available) that match the filterable criteria.
- Provide Feedback on your search results or on the feature itself.
- Edit Criteria to change the criteria for your search.
- Click Done to exit out of the Smart Sites modal. Please note that Smart Sites searches expire 8 hours after generation.You can view your previous Smart Sites search results by clicking the
in the Map.
When reviewing the sites list, you can use the following icons to understand information about the site:
: the acreage of the associated site.
: the buildable acreage, based on the selected Buildable Area Criteria.
: number of associated parcels.
: number of associated owners.
: distance from the closest transmission line.
: distance from the closest substation.
: zoom to the site’s location in the Map.
: save the site as a project, or run a report.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I use Smart Sites to identify available land?
Smart Sites identifies technical suitability based on acreage and other criteria; it does not factor in whether a landowner is currently willing to lease or sell their property. It serves as your strategic starting point.
Can I filter by ISO or RTO boundaries?
Smart Sites currently only supports searching by State, County, or City boundaries. Smart Sites does not currently support searching by ISO/RTO boundaries. If you search in a state that spans multiple ISOs (like Texas), your results may include configurations across different markets (e.g., ERCOT vs. SPP).
Is Smart Sites suitable for all types of development?
No, this feature specifically intended for utility-scale projects that are built on clusters of adjacent parcels. It's not ideal for siting linear projects or anything that only needs a single parcel.