Case Study: US Solar speeds up site selection and doubles property evaluation with Esri GIS automation

US Solar doubles properties evaluated with ESRI

US Solar, a Minneapolis-based solar energy company, faced the challenge of efficiently identifying suitable land parcels for solar energy production from a vast universe of potential sites. To gain a competitive advantage and speed up its site selection process without increasing costs, the company turned to vendor ESRI and its geographic information system (GIS) technology.

ESRI's GIS solution enabled US Solar to automate nearly its entire site selection process. The implemented system layers and analyzes location-based data to quickly filter thousands of parcels based on topography, proximity to substations, and other critical factors. This resulted in US Solar doubling the number of properties it could evaluate without growing its head count, allowing developers to bypass weeks of manual work and focus directly on high-probability opportunities.

US Solar