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Parcel & Grid

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How to use Parcel & Grid

Nine steps, in the order a developer works a site · Updated October 18, 2026

The site is a set of public-data tools and sourced reference pages for people developing solar, wind and storage projects, mostly in ERCOT. This page is the order they fit together, with one line on what each step gives you and the limit to keep in mind. Nothing here needs an account, and the tools keep your work in your browser.

  1. Check the spot

    Type an address or click the map. The land report runs the public screens for that point (flood, wetlands, habitat, historic listings, nearest transmission line and voltage, slope, soils, parcel record in Texas and 26 other states) and adds the county's queue picture: how crowded it is, which POI is most requested, schedules slipping, dates to watch. Every fact links to the agency map and the raw query.

    Limit: It is a point check, not a survey: a parcel can straddle a flood zone or a wetland the pin missed. Click more than one spot on a large tract.

  2. Export the Desktop CIA

    The button appears only once a report is on screen: it sits in the Your Desktop CIA is ready box near the top of the results. Press Open Desktop CIA and the same findings open in a new tab arranged in the twelve sections a consultant's Critical Issues Analysis uses, with a closing list of the studies and filings the flags point to. Print it or save it as a PDF for the file or the IC memo.

    Limit: It is generated in your browser from the report; nothing is sent to us. It is a desktop screen, so section 11 (studies to commission) is the part that matters.

  3. Read the county queue

    Open the county's page. Every ERCOT request there is listed with its stage in ERCOT's own words, size, fuel and point of interconnection, plus what changed since last month and any county action on record. Illinois and Arizona counties have the same from the MISO/PJM queues and EIA.

    Limit: Stage is the furthest milestone ERCOT reports; it says nothing about financing or whether the project will be built.

  4. Pick the point of interconnection

    The POI guide walks through what the term means in the agreement, which public data narrows candidates, how voltage class and the utility's standard shape the connection, where capacity information comes from before and after filing, and how to read the queue at a candidate point.

    Limit: No public document gives a megawatt limit per voltage class, and ERCOT's planning models are not public; the operator's studies answer the capacity question after filing.

  5. Plan the schedule

    Gantt charts by market: the operator's published step durations end to end, the lags the rules impose, and the developer work that has to start early (site control, Phase I, transformer orders). Bars without a published duration are marked as this site's placement.

    Limit: Medians, not your project. Use it to see where the waits are, not as a commitment.

  6. Line up the permits

    The twelve Texas utility-scale stages with who grants each, what goes in, and the timeline the document states, plus the county contacts page. The interconnection page covers every market's steps, fees and windows.

    Limit: Rules change. Each row links to the document; confirm with the agency before a deadline.

  7. Read the documents you already have

    Drop the CIA, ALTA, title commitment, option, IPaC letter or interconnection study into the Diligence Reader. It pulls the constraints, legal access, dates, costs and open items from each, shows where documents disagree, marks which standard diligence documents are still missing, and lists what to commission next.

    Limit: Needs an Anthropic API key (pay-as-you-go from the provider's console; a typical document costs cents to read). Your files go from your browser to the model provider, not to us; we have no server in the path. An AI reads the documents, so check every item against the source before it goes into a memo.

  8. Know the counterparties

    What the public developers, utilities, large loads and equipment makers say in their own filings: fleet MW, Texas projects, large-load request totals, capital plans, tariff and credit-deadline language. The acquisitions, suppliers and data-center briefings sit beside it.

    Limit: Filings only. No prices, no ratings, no recommendations.

  9. Follow the queue monthly

    The ERCOT Queue Brief: each month, what entered and left the queue, what moved forward, the crowded POIs, slipping schedules, rules that moved and dates to watch, county by county. Subscribers also get the email edition, the PDF and the county tables as a spreadsheet.

    Limit: Built from ERCOT's monthly report a few days after it posts; the issue page says which report it reads.

How to trust what you read here

Every figure on a reference page is tied to the document it came from, quoted where the page format allows, and a second, independent pass reloads each cited document before a page goes live; statements it cannot confirm are dropped. Where this site has placed something itself (a bar on a schedule chart, a reading of several provisions), the page says so in those words. Secondary sources (trade press, law-firm alerts) are labeled as such. The methodology page describes the data pipeline and the county data dictionary; the sources registry lists every outside document the site relies on and which pages cite it. Nothing on the site names a company as best or recommended in its own voice.

What is not here

Title, easements and mineral ownership (a title commitment and ALTA); whether a line has room to connect (the operator's studies); listed-species occurrence and archeological sites (field surveys and state site files); soil bearing and groundwater (geotech); local opposition (the commissioners court agenda). The land report and the Desktop CIA tell you which of these to commission first.

General information, not a substitute for the advice of an attorney. Corrections: About and contact.

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