Solar Permitting Insights
Data-driven analysis of U.S. utility-scale solar permitting conditions. Each piece draws directly from the SitePath county dataset — 3,143 counties, primary-source ordinance data, updated quarterly.
Active Utility-Scale Solar Moratoria: U.S. County Tracker
12 U.S. counties currently have active utility-scale solar moratoria. Kansas, North Carolina and Iowa account for 9 of them. What a moratorium means for developers, what outcomes are typical, and how to monitor for changes. Updated within 24 hours of a new filing.
Read the tracker →2026 State Solar Permitting Rankings
All 50 states ranked by median county risk score. Montana leads with a 33.2 median. West Virginia is at the bottom, with only 0% of its counties graded A or B.
See the full rankings →The Most Permitting-Friendly Counties for Utility-Scale Solar
The top 50 counties by risk score. Colorado holds 3 of the top 5 spots. 21 Texas counties appear in the top 50 despite the state having no active RPS mandate. A breakdown of what the top counties have in common — and what the list can't tell you.
See the top 50 →Analysis & field notes
Dated pieces from the SitePath editorial desk. Every claim traces to a primary document.
The Data-Center Pause Has Climbed From County Boards to Congress
In eighteen months the instrument went from a township's 180-day pause to a governor freezing an interconnection queue and a bill in both chambers of Congress. Each rung up the ladder is harder to route around than the one below it.
Read the analysis →Massachusetts Doesn't Argue With Its Towns About Batteries. It Overrules Them.
Nine Massachusetts towns voted to block solar or battery storage. The Attorney General struck down the bylaws, one at a time, under a statute most developers have never read. It is the quietest preemption mechanism in the country and nobody has to pass a law to use it.
Read the analysis →Texas Just Moved the Data-Center Bottleneck From Zoning to the Interconnection Queue
Governor Abbott froze roughly 250–300 grid-connection requests representing about 200 GW — more than twice ERCOT's record peak. For the first time the binding constraint on a data center isn't a county board. It's the queue.
Read the analysis →The Data-Center Map Moved, and Almost Nobody Told the Industry
Ask where data centers get blocked in America and most people still say Northern Virginia. Georgia, Michigan and the Carolinas now hold the overwhelming majority of restricted counties. Virginia holds one.
Read the analysis →Battery Storage Won the Fight Everyone Expected It to Lose
Of 507 counties SitePath tracks for battery storage, five are in a restrictive posture. Meanwhile 114 have written a standalone BESS ordinance and 223 reference NFPA 855. Storage stopped being a political question and became a code question — right as the data-center backlash started reaching for it.
Read the analysis →Massachusetts Doesn't Pass a Preemption Law. Its Attorney General Just Deletes the Bans.
When a Virginia county wanted to keep utility-scale solar out, the state legislature took the decision away from it.
Read the analysis →Massachusetts' BESS moratorium wave meets a state permitting reset: what the new SitePath data shows
SitePath merged five county-cluster research dossiers into the canonical store, covering 14 Massachusetts counties and 26 BESS-related ordinance records. Two things stand out for siting professionals:
Read the analysis →O'Brien County, Iowa Freezes Data-Center Construction County-Wide Through Year-End (Resolution 2026-17)
O'Brien County, IA (FIPS 19141); county seat Primghar; NW Iowa Technology: Data centers Primary documents (verified 2026-07-15 by SitePath meeting-researcher): signed Resolution 2026-17, May 19 2026 minutes, May 19 2026 agenda.
Read the analysis →Quarterly Regional Recap — Virginia / PJM Mid-Atlantic (Q2 2026)
The second quarter of 2026 was the quarter Virginia stopped being a county-by-county story and became a statewide one.
Read the analysis →Two July Deadlines Have Arrived — and They Pull Virginia Solar in Opposite Directions
If you develop utility-scale solar, two dates have been circled on your calendar all year. This week, both of them passed within seventy-two hours of each other — and they push you in opposite directions.
Read the analysis →The data-center backlash hits PJM: four New Jersey towns move to ban or freeze data centers, with York County (SC) and Wilson County (TN) close behind
A coordinated wave of local data-center restrictions surfaced in SitePath's news layer this cycle. The trigger headline (GovTech, 2026-06-22, in SitePath's news index) was "Data Center Bans Emerge in 4 More New Jersey Communities." The…
Read the analysis →Three NW Iowa Counties Slap One-Year Moratoriums on Data Centers After a 900-Acre Salix Annexation
The Woodbury County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to impose a one-year moratorium on data-center development in the unincorporated parts of the county.
Read the analysis →Butler County, Ohio approves a data-center moratorium, and it isn't in the curated feed yet
Butler County, Ohio — the Cincinnati–Dayton-corridor county of roughly 390,000 people — has approved a moratorium on data centers.
Read the analysis →Virginia's July 1 Law Doesn't Just Stop Solar Bans — It Stops Battery-Storage Bans Too, Right as Fire Fears Peak
On July 1, Virginia counties lose a power most of them never expected to lose: the power to say no to a battery.
Read the analysis →The data-center brakes are coming from city hall — and now from Richmond's budget
In a single week, three more local governments moved to slam the door on data centers, and Virginia lawmakers — who can't ban them — moved instead to tax them.
Read the analysis →Virginia's budget now turns on data centers: a tax-break fight and a new impact-fee proposal head into a June 30 cliff
Virginia's state budget — normally a fight about schools and Medicaid — has become, this month, a fight about data centers. Two threads are converging on the same deadline:
Read the analysis →Virginia's data-center backlash reaches Manassas: a packed state-senate listening session, against the backdrop of the Digital Gateway's collapse in court
On June 15, 2026 (6–8 PM), roughly 230 residents packed a data-center listening session at the Best Western Battlefield Inn, Manassas (unincorporated Prince William County), hosted by state Sen. L.
Read the analysis →Three Years After Illinois Banned Solar Bans, Counties Are Still Fighting in Court. Virginia Is Next.
On July 1, Virginia becomes the next state to tell its counties they can no longer ban utility-scale solar. The instinct is to treat that date as the end of a fight. Illinois suggests it is closer to the beginning of one.
Read the analysis →State Preemption Reaches the Mid-Atlantic: How Virginia's HB 711 Rewrites the County Solar Map
For three years, the most important fact about utility-scale solar in the United States has been that the action is local.
Read the analysis →Virginia's Solar Preemption Law Takes Effect July 1 — What Changes for the Counties That Banned Solar
On July 1, 2026, the ground rules for siting utility-scale solar in Virginia change for the first time since the Virginia Clean Economy Act.
Read the analysis →Virginia's Solar Ban Counties Run Out of Road on July 1
On July 1, a handful of Virginia counties that spent the last two years writing utility-scale solar out of their zoning codes will have to start saying yes again — or at least stop saying a flat no.
Read the analysis →