U.S. Solar Siting Regulation and Zoning Ordinances (2025)
A machine readable collection of documented solar siting ordinances at the state and local (e.g., county, township) level throughout the United States. The data were compiled using the Infrastructure Continuous Ordinance Mapping for Planning and Siting Systems (INFRA-COMPASS) tool, which leverages Large Language Models (LLMs) to automate the collection of local codes and ordinances applicable to energy infrastructure. URLs for the ordinance source documents are included in the Solar Ordinances spreadsheet. The GeoPackage file included below contains the jurisdiction shapes for each ordinance. Note that the GeoPackage file is formatted for ingestion by NLR's reVX setbacks tool and therefore does not contain any of the state-level regulations.
**NOTE**: This data was collected with the help of generative AI. The Large Language Models used for this effort make mistakes. Always validate the data for critical use cases.
This data is an update to a previously developed database of wind ordinances found in OEDI Submission 5734: see the "U.S. Solar Siting Regulation and Zoning Ordinances 2022" link below.
INFRA-COMPASS version used for collection: v0.11.3
LLMs used for collection: GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, GPT-4.1 nano
Complete Metadata
| @type | dcat:Dataset |
|---|---|
| accessLevel | public |
| bureauCode |
[
"019:20"
]
|
| contactPoint |
{
"fn": "NLR Geospatial Data Science",
"@type": "vcard:Contact",
"hasEmail": "mailto:rev@nrel.gov"
}
|
| dataQuality |
true
|
| description | A machine readable collection of documented solar siting ordinances at the state and local (e.g., county, township) level throughout the United States. The data were compiled using the Infrastructure Continuous Ordinance Mapping for Planning and Siting Systems (INFRA-COMPASS) tool, which leverages Large Language Models (LLMs) to automate the collection of local codes and ordinances applicable to energy infrastructure. URLs for the ordinance source documents are included in the Solar Ordinances spreadsheet. The GeoPackage file included below contains the jurisdiction shapes for each ordinance. Note that the GeoPackage file is formatted for ingestion by NLR's reVX setbacks tool and therefore does not contain any of the state-level regulations. **NOTE**: This data was collected with the help of generative AI. The Large Language Models used for this effort make mistakes. Always validate the data for critical use cases. This data is an update to a previously developed database of wind ordinances found in OEDI Submission 5734: see the "U.S. Solar Siting Regulation and Zoning Ordinances 2022" link below. INFRA-COMPASS version used for collection: v0.11.3 LLMs used for collection: GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, GPT-4.1 nano |
| distribution |
[
{
"@type": "dcat:Distribution",
"title": "U.S. Solar Siting Regulation and Zoning Ordinances 2022",
"format": "HTML",
"accessURL": "https://data.openei.org/submissions/5734",
"mediaType": "text/html",
"description": "A collection of documented solar siting ordinances at the state, county, township, and local level throughout the United States. The submission linked here is an older version of this submission."
},
{
"@type": "dcat:Distribution",
"title": "U.S. Counties FIPS Layer",
"format": "HTML",
"accessURL": "https://data.openei.org/submissions/8397",
"mediaType": "text/html",
"description": "OEDI submission including a map of U.S. Counties FIPS Layer which are utilized to compute setbacks (distances)."
},
{
"@type": "dcat:Distribution",
"title": "INFRA-COMPASS GitHub Repository",
"format": "HTML",
"accessURL": "https://github.com/NREL/COMPASS",
"mediaType": "text/html",
"description": "INFRA-COMPASS is a tool that leverages Large Language Models (LLMs) to create and maintain an inventory of state and local codes and ordinances applicable to energy infrastructure."
},
{
"@type": "dcat:Distribution",
"title": "Solar Ordinances 2025.xlsx",
"format": "xlsx",
"mediaType": "application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet",
"description": "A collection of documented solar siting ordinances at the state and local (e.g., county, township) level throughout the United States. URLs for the ordinance source documents are included in the Solar Ordinances spreadsheet.",
"downloadURL": "https://data.openei.org/files/8602/Solar%20Ordinances%202025.xlsx"
},
{
"@type": "dcat:Distribution",
"title": "Solar Ordinances reVX 2025-12-30.gpkg",
"format": "gpkg",
"mediaType": "application/geopackage+sqlite3",
"description": "A machine readable collection of documented solar siting ordinances at the local (e.g., county, township) level throughout the United States. This file contains the jurisdiction shapes for each ordinance. It is formatted for ingestion by NREL's reVX setbacks tool and therefore does not contain any of the state-level regulations.",
"downloadURL": "https://data.openei.org/files/8602/Solar%20Ordinances%20reVX%202025-12-30.gpkg"
}
]
|
| identifier | https://data.openei.org/submissions/8602 |
| issued | 2025-12-30T07:00:00Z |
| keyword |
[
"AI",
"COMPASS",
"INFRA-COMPASS",
"LLM",
"Siting Lab",
"SitingLab",
"analysis",
"citations",
"energy",
"energy analysis",
"exclusion",
"incentives",
"land-based solar",
"law",
"legal",
"local",
"machine readable",
"ordinances",
"policy",
"power",
"pv",
"regulatory constraint",
"regulatory constraints",
"siting",
"solar",
"solar pv"
]
|
| landingPage | https://data.openei.org/submissions/8602 |
| license | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| modified | 2026-02-03T13:45:06Z |
| programCode |
[
"019:000",
"019:008"
]
|
| projectNumber |
"52950"
|
| projectTitle | Modeling Solar Resource Supply Curves and Land Use |
| publisher |
{
"name": "National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR)",
"@type": "org:Organization"
}
|
| spatial |
"{"type":"Polygon","coordinates":[[[-167.7267,13.518],[-53.8316,13.518],[-53.8316,75.0714],[-167.7267,75.0714],[-167.7267,13.518]]]}"
|
| title | U.S. Solar Siting Regulation and Zoning Ordinances (2025) |
