This is the most common workflow for conducting Greenfield site selection in PVcase Prospect to identify promising sites for development. For a more detailed onboarding, please refer to our Academy course.
Greenfield site selection overview
Below are the core steps (and the actions involved) to create a new siting project in PVcase Prospect and find suitable land for renewable siting near target substations and/or power lines.
Step 1: Create a new project
From the Portfolio View page (home page), create a new project to get started.
- In the left sidebar, click New Project
- Fill in project details:
- Name your project
- Select a region from the dropdown
- Fill in optional fields, if desired: Project Technology, Status, Stage, Priority, Description.
- Click Create Project
Step 2: Add grid infrastructure (substations and/or power lines)
Already have a site or parcel boundaries identified (brownfield, M&A, etc.)? Jump ahead to Step 3.
There are many ways to select substations and/or power lines to target in the site selection process.
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Add grid infrastructure from the workflow sidebar:
- Select grid infrastructure from one of the pre-loaded substation/power line layers
- Search for grid infrastructure near existing project features (e.g. pull in transmission lines within 0.25 mi of already-saved substations).
- Manually map out grid infrastructure by drawing.
Want to scale up your site selection? Add multiple substations or power lines to the same project to search for and evaluate multiple sites at once on a single project campaign.
Step 3: Search for land
Find land for potential sites close to your target substations and/or power lines.
There are different methods to do that:
- Select individual parcels to add to the map via the Parcels layer directly from the parcels map layer.
- Select multiple parcels to add in a target area.
- Search for parcels by owner name.
- Manually draw out custom parcel boundaries.
Searching for land around saved assets is great for finding relatively large parcels, relatively close to the target grid infrastructure.
Step 4: Evaluate buildability of parcels
Quickly analyze key environmental/infrastructural hazards and setbacks for all parcels and create constraint maps/calculated buildable acreage based on those constraints.
- Run the Buildable area analysis on the project to analyze all parcels on a project
- View the constraint maps and see what is buildable
- Check out the calculated buildable area for each parcel
- Manually remove additional exclusion areas, as needed
(Optional) Group parcels together into a site area
If needed, group together multiple parcels into a 'site/project area' using the super parcel tool. This will make it easier to see the total site acreage and correctly apply internal parcel boundary setbacks when you run the buildable area analysis.
Step 5: Review/identify the best parcels to target
Hone in on the best parcels through these different tools as you review the sites:
- Sort/filter parcels based on key attributes (e.g. sort parcels based on Buildable Acres; filter to show only parcels over X buildable acres, etc.)
- Star rate parcels to track which parcels are better / worse.
- Save notes about a parcel.
- Remove parcels that are not a good fit (you can also bulk delete bad parcels based on certain criteria by using the filtering tool to filter and then select and bulk delete bad parcels).
- Track site control status and agreement type as you reach out to landowners.
Step 6: Export data
Seamlessly continue with the next phases of project development by exporting all key site data. Export project map/constraint maps, landowner information/parcel data, and PDF reports.
- Export as a KML/KMZ (project map)
- Export as a Shapefile (project map)
- Export as Excel or CSV file with landowner/mailing list info/parcel details
- Export parcel report (PDF) (parcel and Buildable Area Analysis details)
- Export parcel images (.png) or screenshots.
- Export PVcase Ground Mount file (project map) for use in PVcase Ground Mount.