New Features & Enhancements

AO Capacity: New states available for purchase

We’re now well underway with our AO Capacity offering (injection capacity studies delivered as georeferenced layers).

Available for purchase: PJM, NYISO, ISONE, 5 WECC States: CO, NM, UT, NV, AZ, 1 SERC State: SC, and TVA
Coming soon: ERCOT
Next Up: SPP, SERC, SOCO, MISO, remainder of WECC, FRCC (exact order may change; full U.S. available by mid-2023)

We’re continuing to add additional attributes as well, including:

Limiting contingencies (across a wide variety of injection levels)
Queue Data
“Load” / “charging” capacity for storage siting
Summer peak & at least one ‘shoulder’ scenario
In areas with a cluster process (actual vs. stressed scenarios)
We can also do additional sensitivities/assumptions via our partner for an added fee
Deliverability and upgrade costs coming shortly

Ready to learn more? Please reach out to support@andersonopt.com

Improved slope analysis

Buildable Area Analysis now uses best-available digital elevation models from USGS to calculate slope (uses higher resolution data where available). Read more here
All U.S. slope analyses utilize the parcel’s local geographic projection zone (State Plane, 2011) to ensure accuracy in calculations
Performance improvements to speed up processing time for slope analysis
We also refreshed wetlands USFW data source with latest available data

Import custom layer from a Shapefile

Users may now import Shapefiles into AO to save as custom layers (and/or to copy features from the Shapefile to the AO map/save as assets).

Note: Import Shapefiles one-at-a-time (component files may be in folder or zipped; just can’t import multiple separate .shp files simultaneously). We plan to add support in the future to allow users to import multiple .shp files at one time, but for now it can only parse one layer at a time.

Save imported layers to a specific project or asset detail map

When you import a KML or Shapefile to save as a custom layer, you can now choose where to save the layer (e.g. to the specific project/parcel map layer catalog; or to your team’s layer catalog for that state), to help keep your layer catalog organized.

Feedback Group

What to help improve AO? Join our user research group. When research needs come up, we’ll reach out to you with details about the particular topic we’re looking for input on. If interested, you would meet 1-on-1 with our user interface designer; read more here.

New nationwide layers

Check out these new nationwide layers. We also broke out the old ‘Environmental’ layer category into more specific categories so that it’s easier to find related datasets (e.g. all soil layers are now under a new Soil / Geologic category in the catalog).

Disadvantaged Census Tracts
New Market Tax Credits (2020)
Hurricane Storm Surge (categories 1-5)
Tsunami Events and Significant Earthquakes
NOAA Damage Points/Lines/Polygons
New slope shading layer shows areas with >10% slope

New soil layers
- Hardness of Fragments
- Soil Susceptibility to Frost Heaving
- Depth to Any Soil Restrictive Layer
- Rating for Ground-based Solar Arrays, Soil-penetrating Anchor Systems
New severe weather layers from FEMA National Risk Index
- Hail Risk - Census Tract, Annualized Frequency
- Hail Risk - County, Annualized Frequency
- Tornado Risk - Census Tract, Annualized Frequency
- Tornado Risk - County, Annualized Frequency
Tornadoes - NOAA Storm Reports
Tornadoes - NWS Local Storm Reports

Product Release Notes: 2/3/23