Transmission routing · Site selection · Environmental GIS
SaddlePoint is a senior-led geospatial practice for utilities, developers, and the consultancies that serve them. We find corridors and sites that balance engineering, environment, and community, and we record every weight and data source so the decision stands up in front of regulators, landowners, and your own leadership.
Each change reruns a least-cost path across 19,800 cells. Dots mark angle structures. Faint dashed lines are the four preset alternatives.
Why now
The grid is being planned for twenty years out while data centers want power in two. Every new corridor has to be found faster and defended harder than the last one.
Planning horizon
FERC Order 1920 requires transmission providers to plan regionally on a twenty-year horizon. Those plans need credible corridor options early, before a single landowner letter goes out.
Large load
Data center and industrial developers now screen sites by deliverable power first. Siting the load and the line together saves a year of rework.
Defensibility
Regulators, intervenors, and landowners expect to see the alternatives you rejected and why. A route without a decision trail is a route that gets relitigated.
Where we sit
Routing platforms are fast and large firms are thorough. SaddlePoint pairs automated least-cost modeling with a principal who has carried routes through filings, so you get both on the same schedule.
| Routing platforms | Large A/E firms | SaddlePoint | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who runs the analysis | Your team, inside vendor software | Project staff, reviewed by seniors | A GISP with 13+ years in Esri and transmission siting |
| How weights are set | Model defaults you tune yourself | Workshops, often summarized loosely | Calibrated with stakeholders and recorded line by line |
| First corridors | Hours, once data is loaded | Weeks to months | Ten business days, fixed fee |
| What you keep | A license and exports | A report | A living decision record plus the data behind it |
| Hearing support | Limited | Yes, at large-firm rates | Yes, from the person who built the model |
Services
Each engagement plugs into the same data model, so a site screen can become a corridor study and a corridor study can become a permit package without starting over.
Macro-corridor to centerline for transmission, distribution, pipelines, and fiber. Methods follow the EPRI-GTC overhead routing approach and are built for CPCN and certificate of need filings.
Ranked sites for data centers, substations, solar, storage, and industrial load, screened on power proximity, water, fiber, terrain, and permitting risk.
Desktop wetland and stream screening, protected species habitat, and archaeological sensitivity models shaped by a background in field archaeology and geophysical survey.
ArcGIS Enterprise architecture, licensing governance, and custom dashboards that keep field data, analysis, and client reporting in one auditable chain.
Engagements
Most siting questions can be answered well in days. These packages are priced up front so you can approve them without a procurement cycle.
Study area to three ranked corridor alternatives, a constraint atlas, and a comparison matrix your team can defend internally and with regulators.
A ranked shortlist of sites for a defined load or facility, with fatal flaws called out before anyone spends on options or field work.
A living dashboard that logs every criterion, weight, data vintage, and route change, ready to support filings, open houses, and testimony.
Senior geospatial leadership for developers and consultancies that need a director-level owner for data, standards, and delivery without a full-time hire.
Every package is scoped in a 30-minute call.
Method
A saddle point is where opposing forces reach balance. Our method is built to find that point on purpose and to show its work at every step.
Define the study area, the project need, and the stakeholders whose concerns become criteria.
Calibrate criteria weights in a working session and record who set them and why.
Build cost surfaces and least-cost corridors through engineering, environmental, and community lenses.
Run sensitivity cases to see how far the preferred route moves when weights shift. Stable routes are defensible routes.
Capture every input, weight, and alternative in a decision record ready for filings and testimony.
Sectors
Founder & principal
Cincinnati, Ohio
Donald started in the field, in archaeology and geophysical survey, and spent the next decade and more building geospatial programs on the Esri platform. He led siting for a large-scale extra-high-voltage transmission program, created an enterprise site selection and routing platform, and directed a global geospatial business line with full P&L responsibility. SaddlePoint puts that experience directly on your project, without layers in between.
Contact
A line, a load, or a shortlist that needs a second look. Send a sentence or two and a rough study area, and you will hear back within one business day.
hello@saddlepointgeo.com