I find this site so fascinating, seeing how all the massive power lines are hooked up to far-away power plants and gradually have their voltage stepped down as they connect to consumers. All the undersea cables and pipelines I didn't know about.
When I lived in Texas, we had a massive storm in winter of 2021 leaving many without power for a week.
I was told that Texas maintained its own energy grid independent from the rest of the nation’s eastern and western grids, and supposedly only had a handful of high-voltage DC lines running between Texas’s and the rest of the nation’s. Supposedly this was why we couldn’t rely on excess capacity from anywhere else in the nation while our power generation capability was down.
But this map doesn’t seem to show Texas as isolated - there appear to be many lines in and out and no clear separation?
An initially-stupid-sounding idea I heard a while back was running power cables through the ocean floors between America and the rest of the world. It's apparently feasible and the big benefit of it is that at the grid peak hour when the sun is not shining in Europe, they can get cheap solar from America and vice versa
Wanted to do a map of the power network here in Romania, hadn't thought to check if anything similar already existed, or I couldn't find it myself, at least, but it seems like this map has (almost) all that I wanted to do in that respect, including the position of the power poles on the ground.
For the Netherlands (and surrounding countries), there is Hoogspanningsnet (the high-voltage grid), which is maintained by infrastructure enthusiasts: https://webkaart.hoogspanningsnet.com/
I find the fact that beer pipelines have their own color designation in the map legend intriguing. Are they common enough outside of breweries to merit singling them out?
There are two beer pipelines in Belgium: https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/2isf I think the fact that they're in the OpenStreetMap data at all is enough to give them their own color on the map.
In New Zealand at least, a lot of this data seems to come from imagery; it's quite outdated, the cables are all missing and the voltages are pretty hit and miss. Cool project though.
It may be my autism, but as a kid, I was always fascinated by infrastructure, particularly power lines. My dad once drove me down an Edison Road up to the top of a mountain just to see where the power line went. We had to stop at the top. I could see my neighborhood from a view that I had never seen before. Today I would consider it beautiful. Back then it was weird!
I had a fascination with how different the poles looked and how the equipment was mounted. It seemed like no two pylons were alike.
Based on this map, it looks like all of our power comes from hydroelectric.
I love this site. I just wish it was more complete. There are some major water and natural gas pipelines that aren't recorded. Maybe in time.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 56.4 ms ] threadwhile such open data has also positive effects
have you considered both? it is not like deleting power plant from single map would hide it
disclaimer: I am OpenStreetMap contributor
2024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39109185
2022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29948473
I was told that Texas maintained its own energy grid independent from the rest of the nation’s eastern and western grids, and supposedly only had a handful of high-voltage DC lines running between Texas’s and the rest of the nation’s. Supposedly this was why we couldn’t rely on excess capacity from anywhere else in the nation while our power generation capability was down.
But this map doesn’t seem to show Texas as isolated - there appear to be many lines in and out and no clear separation?
Feel free to edit it if you can!
(even if this specific data is not possible to be added by you - feel free to add say nearby shop or park)
ad: if you have Android I can recommend StreetComplete (great for newbies)
if you have iPhone - GoMap!! is great though a bit more complicated to use
Vespucci is more complicated and more powerful than StreetComplete editor for Android phones
or you can edit directly on osm.org from desktop
-------------
disclaimer: I am a walking conflict of interest as far as OSM goes (for start, I am StreetComplete contributor)
Wanted to do a map of the power network here in Romania, hadn't thought to check if anything similar already existed, or I couldn't find it myself, at least, but it seems like this map has (almost) all that I wanted to do in that respect, including the position of the power poles on the ground.
From what I can see it's pretty complete and up to date for my area.
I wonder how easy it would be to prepare a query in osm to find all such cases.
Everything on the left thereof was then without power for multiple days as this was a single point of failure.
See thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46487404
I also tried to see any vulnerable sabotage spots that would put my electricity out, but that seems harder.
So it is missing in OpenStreetMap-based map.
Feel free to edit it if you can!
(even if this specific data is not possible to be added by you - feel free to add say nearby shop or park)
ad: if you have Android I can recommend StreetComplete (great for newbies)
if you have iPhone - GoMap!! is great though a bit more complicated to use
Vespucci is more complicated and more powerful than StreetComplete editor for Android phones
or you can edit directly on osm.org from desktop
-------------
disclaimer: I am a walking conflict of interest as far as OSM goes (for start, I am StreetComplete contributor)
https://openinframap.org/#7.17/52.529/1.681
I had a fascination with how different the poles looked and how the equipment was mounted. It seemed like no two pylons were alike.
Based on this map, it looks like all of our power comes from hydroelectric.
I love this site. I just wish it was more complete. There are some major water and natural gas pipelines that aren't recorded. Maybe in time.