Gross acres and buildable acres
Gross acreage is the full size of a parcel. Buildable acreage is what is left after removing land in flood zones, wetlands, protected areas, steep slopes, open water and areas that are already built up. A survey and a title review often remove more, such as easements, setbacks and pipeline corridors.
What a carve-out is
A carve-out is a smaller piece of a large parcel chosen for the project. A buyer may only want the flat block nearest the power line, not the whole ranch. The shape matters too: one large connected block is worth more than the same acres in scattered pieces.
How Voltane measures it
Voltane deducts FEMA flood zones, wetlands from the National Wetlands Inventory, protected land, steep slope, water and built-up land, and reports the largest connected flat block. For very large parcels, the engine measures a carve-out picked close to a high-voltage line. That carve-out is not itself checked for flood, wetlands or slope, and Voltane says so on the report. Where an input is missing, the result is shown as unknown.
Questions people ask
How many buildable acres does a data center need?
It depends on the size of the campus, the building design, on-site generation and setbacks. Tell Voltane your target megawatts and acreage, and the search will work from your numbers.
Is buildable acreage from a map final?
No. It is a desktop estimate from public data. A survey, a wetland delineation and local zoning rules set the real figure.
Related
More glossary
- What is time to power?
- What is powered land?
- What is a powered shell?
- What is large load interconnection?
- What is a point of interconnection?
- What is an interconnection queue?
- What is queue position?
- What is ERCOT?
Need a site, or have one?
Tell us what you need and Voltane finds, reports on and prices candidate sites in ERCOT. Or bring a site you already have for a path-to-power report (by request for now).