Guide
How to tell a solar, wind, storage or data center project is about to break ground
The public records a site leaves on its way to construction, in the order they appear, and which ones mean work is close.
Most projects announced never get built, and the ones that do take years to get from a press release to a bulldozer. If you sell to the crews who build them, the question is not whether a project exists but when work starts and who is doing it. The public record answers both, if you know which records to read and in what order.
1. The queue entry: the site exists
A power project's first public trace is usually its request in the grid operator's interconnection queue, three to six years before it is built. A data center's is more often a rezoning case or a land purchase. Either tells you where and how big, and not much more: most queue requests are withdrawn.
2. Local approvals and tax deals: the county is on board
Next come the county and state decisions: a siting approval, a conditional use permit or rezoning, and often a tax abatement or other agreement with the county or school district. These are voted on in public meetings, so they appear on agendas, often with the project company's name and an expected construction year.
3. The interconnection agreement and the money: the developer is committed
A signed interconnection agreement and, where the operator publishes it, security posted with a notice to proceed, mean the developer is spending real money. So does a signed power purchase agreement or a financing close. Construction is typically six to eighteen months out.
4. The stormwater permit: work is weeks away
The construction stormwater permit is the closest public signal to the start of work. It is filed before the ground is disturbed, it states the acreage and the expected start, and the operator who files it is often the builder. If you only watch one record, watch this one.
5. The builder hires and the ground changes: work has started
Builders post jobs for a project's superintendent, safety lead and craft labor as they mobilize, often with the project's name and county in the title. Then the first ground disturbance shows up in satellite imagery within days of clearing.
How Groundtrace uses this
Groundtrace reads each of these records daily, joins them to one project, and ranks projects by the latest signal they have reached, not by their queue date. Each project's page shows its stage and its construction start to the quarter; the builder, the trades, the dates and the people to call are in the app, each with the record behind it. Start with utility solar, battery storage, onshore wind or data centers.