The request
This example follows one request through Voltane's engine: the frozen brief published at the sample brief page. It was built on 2026-11-10 from Voltane's Texas parcel-level sites (data dated 2026-10-06), with no client behind it.
The objective, as the brief records it: a 200 MW solar + storage project in Texas, on a site of at least 1,000 acres, with a 345 kV line within 2 miles, no more than 500 MW of queued projects within 10 miles, and no federal land. Interconnection capacity at the point of interconnection was also named as a must-have.
What the engine checked
The engine turned the request into six must-haves and read every site against them:
- Site size: at least 1,000 total acres.
- Distance to an extra-high-voltage line (345 kV+): at most 2 miles.
- Interconnection-queue MW within 10 miles: at most 500 MW.
- Federal or military land: no overlap.
- Indicative project size: at least 200 MW. The engine proposed this one from the 200 MW project size: the largest contiguous buildable block divided by 4.25 acres per MW. It is indicative, and the DC/AC basis is not set.
- Interconnection capacity at the point of interconnection: a must-have that was not screened. No public dataset states it, and distance to a line is not a connection.
The brief also records what was read. The map serves 333,870 Texas sites, and 206,065 of them pass every map exclusion. The brief read those 206,065 sites, each joined to its county record (234 county files).
Each fact has a named source: TxGIO statewide parcels 2025 for site size, HIFLD transmission (final release 2024-09-30) plus OpenStreetMap for line distance, the ERCOT GIS report of August 2026 for queue MW, and PAD-US 4.1 for federal and military land.
What came back
Of the 206,065 sites read, 0 met the requirements, 1,161 needed more information and 204,904 were excluded.
The zero is deliberate. No site is counted as meeting the requirements while a must-have is unresolved, and interconnection capacity could not be screened for any site. So the best a site could do was pass five must-haves with one unknown.
The first page of the brief lists three such sites, all in the "Needs more information" group:
| County | Grid | Site size | Indicative size | 345 kV+ line | Queue MW within 10 mi | Must-haves |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Webb County | ERCOT | 2,238 ac | 519 MW | 0 mi | 0 MW | 5 pass, 0 fail, 1 unknown |
| Pecos County | ERCOT | 4,000 ac | 698 MW | 0 mi | 0 MW | 5 pass, 0 fail, 1 unknown |
| Martin County | ERCOT (likely) | 2,717 ac | 540 MW | 0 mi | 0 MW | 5 pass, 0 fail, 1 unknown |
Line distance is measured from the parcel edge. Indicative size is land, not grid: buildable acres divided by 4.25 acres per MW. A grid marked "likely" is inferred from straddling utility territories and has to be confirmed with the utility.
What stayed unknown
- Interconnection capacity. Every shortlisted site carries the status "Unverified: Interconnection capacity at the point of interconnection not screened". The brief says an ERCOT interconnection study is needed. Voltane's capacity signal is a proxy built from distance to transmission and queue competition. It is never available MW at a substation.
- What 0 MW of queue means. The brief's own caveat: queued MW near a site is a competition proxy only, not a measure of grid headroom, and requests that could not be located are not counted, so 0 MW is not "no competition". Pecos County shows why this matters. The Pecos site reads 0 MW within 10 miles, while Voltane's county research counts 20,699 MW queued in Pecos County as a whole.
- The real project size. The MW figures are indicative, at 4.25 acres per MW, with the DC/AC basis not set.
- Ownership, boundaries and current use. The brief points to the official county record for each site. Voltane does not publish landowner names.
What a client would do next
The brief ends with next checks, and they are the same ones a client would run:
- Pull the official county record for each shortlisted site and confirm ownership, boundaries and current use.
- Ask the utility or grid operator for a pre-application or feasibility review. Distance to a line or substation is not interconnection.
- Check county and municipal rules for the technology.
Voltane takes no action with outside parties: any contact with landowners, utilities or agencies is the client's to make.
To start a search like this for your own project, send the request (MW, target year, region, acreage) through Find me a site. If you already hold a site, Analyze my site is available by request.
Questions people ask
Is this a real client project?
No. It is a worked example on public data, built by Voltane's engine and frozen as the public sample brief. Client work is confidential and is not described on this site.
Why did no site meet the requirements?
Because one must-have, interconnection capacity at the point of interconnection, cannot be screened from public data. Voltane does not count a site as meeting the requirements while a must-have is unresolved, so 1,161 sites are listed as needing more information instead.
Does 0 MW of nearby queue mean the grid has room?
No. Queued MW near a site is a competition proxy only. Requests that could not be located are not counted, and none of it measures grid headroom. Only an interconnection study answers that.
Related
More worked examples
- Worked example: backtesting time to power on public ERCOT data
- Worked example: checking the screen against real projects
- Worked example: a 300 MW data center request in ERCOT
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