Quick Answer
Energy developers and utilities use the land and building record behind each parcel: boundaries and coordinates, acreage, zoning and land use, legal descriptions, building size and age, and the owner of record and recorded transfers. It comes from county assessor, recorder, and GIS offices, and it is used to screen sites, map corridors, plan for load growth, and scope service requests. Teams either assemble it county by county or license it from a provider that normalizes roughly 3,000 county formats into one schema and delivers it by API or bulk transfer.
Summary
Energy work has two layers. The grid layer holds substations, transmission lines, interconnection queues, service territories, and hazard zones, and it comes from utilities, grid operators, and public energy datasets. The land layer holds every parcel: its boundary, acreage, zoning, land use, buildings, and owner of record, and it comes from roughly 3,000 counties that each publish in their own format on their own schedule. Site screening, corridor routing, load forecasting, and service planning all need both layers joined. A normalized property data provider supplies the land layer in one schema keyed by parcel ID and boundary, so it can be joined to the grid layer a team already maintains. What it does not do is model the grid: capacity, interconnection, hazard, and energy use stay with the tools built for them.
The fields energy work runs on
Four groups cover most of it. Parcel and boundary fields locate the land and size it: parcel ID, boundary polygon, coordinates, acreage, and land area. Zoning and land-use fields say what the land can be used for and how it is used today: zoning code, land-use code, legal description, subdivision, frontage, and depth. Structure fields describe the buildings on it: building area, year built, stories, units, building count, roof, and heating fuel where the county records it. Ownership and transfer fields complete the record: owner of record and recorded transfers with their dates and document types.
Each team reads the record differently. A developer screens parcels by acreage, zoning, and land use, then traces a route across their boundaries. A land team reads the owner of record and legal description to prepare lease, option, and easement work. A utility planner reads building size, age, units, and new construction to forecast load and scope service.
Where the data comes from
The land layer is public record. County assessors publish building characteristics, land-use codes, and acreage on the tax roll. County recorders file deeds and transfers, which is where owner of record and sale history come from. GIS departments publish parcel boundaries and zoning. Most parcels carry a boundary polygon; where a county publishes none, the record carries coordinates instead.
The grid layer is not in the property record. Substations, transmission lines, interconnection queues, utility service territories, rate schedules, and hazard zones come from utilities, grid operators, and public energy and hazard datasets. They join to the land layer by location. A provider like Realie collects the land layer at the source, normalizes it into one schema keyed by parcel, refreshes it on a rolling, per-county cycle so vintage varies by county, and delivers it by API for lookups or by bulk transfer for state-wide work.
What property data is not
Property data describes a parcel, not a person. It is not a credit report, and Realie is not a consumer reporting agency. Realie's Terms of Use prohibit using the data as a factor in establishing an individual's eligibility for credit, insurance, employment, or housing, or for any other FCRA-regulated purpose.
Energy workflows sit inside that boundary because they start from land and buildings: a candidate site, a corridor, a program area, or a service address. Owner of record supports the land transactions behind a project, such as leases, options, and easements, and the record says nothing about anyone's eligibility for a program, a rate, or financing.
Sources
Frequently asked questions
- Can I screen a whole state for sites of a given size?
- Yes, with bulk delivery. Load the state's parcel records into your GIS or warehouse and filter by acreage, zoning, and land-use code there. The API is built for lookups by address, parcel ID, or a point rather than state-wide screens.
- How do I pull the parcels around a substation or candidate site?
- Location search returns parcels within a radius of up to two miles around a latitude and longitude. It skips parcels without a street address unless you set includeUnassignedAddress to true, which matters for rural and vacant land. For longer corridors or larger areas, intersect your route with parcel boundaries from a bulk delivery.
- Does the record include utility territories, rates, or grid infrastructure?
- No. The record covers the parcel and its buildings. Substations, transmission lines, interconnection queues, service territories, and rate schedules come from utilities, grid operators, and public energy datasets, and join to parcels by location.
- Does every parcel have a boundary polygon?
- Most do. Where a county publishes no boundary, the record carries coordinates without a polygon, so plan a point-based fallback for spatial joins.
- Can this data be used to qualify customers for programs or financing?
- No. It is public-record property data, not a consumer report. Realie's Terms of Use prohibit using it as a factor in an individual's eligibility for credit, insurance, employment, or housing, or for any other FCRA-regulated purpose. Use it to describe land and buildings.
- How do energy and utility teams access the data?
- Through a REST API for lookups by address, parcel ID, or location, through bulk transfers of state or nationwide datasets delivered to the team's cloud storage, or through the MCP server for AI assistants. Self-service API plans start free, and bulk is licensed separately.