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Map It 📍

INTRODUCTION (Click Me)

Welcome to our interactive launchpad and hub for contributing to power grid mapping via OpenStreetMap! Click on a country or state below to start mapping power infrastructure directly in JOSM. 🚀 If this is your first time grid mapping, please go through the Starter-Kit. You can use the #MapYourGrid hashtag in your changeset to show your support for our initiative when you make an edit! To start mapping, please open JOSM, ensure that remote control is activated in Preferences and load your data:

  1. The Default Transmission (90 kV+) pulls all power infrastructure relevant for the transmission grid. For more details about which data is pulled via Overpass please read our OpenStreetMap Grid Definitions. Distribution grids are barely visible in satellite data and should therefore only be mapped in individual cases.
  2. The Osmose, Global Energy Monitor, and Wikidata buttons provide hint layer data, which you can read about in our Tools and Strategies page. Please note that hint layers only work at a national level.

Map Legend for the recommended MapCSS (Click Me)

Power Grid Legend

Good First Lines (Click Me)

Open this Spreadsheet in another Windoww

JOSM Hotkeys (Click Me)

These JOSM hotkeys have proven helpful for grid mapping:

Hotkey Function Description
S Select tool (for selecting objects)
A Add tool (for drawing new nodes or ways)
CTRL+C Copy selected objects
CTRL+V Paste objects from clipboard
CTRL+F Search (Needs expert mode activated under View)
CTRL+Z Undo last action
CTRL+Y Redo last undone action
CTRL+SHIFT+C Copy coordinates of the selected point(s) to clipboard
CTRL+W Switch between activated Map Paint Style and Wireframe
CTRL+H History (opens history dialog for selected objects)
Shift+V Validate (runs data validation on the current layer)
Tabulator Show/hide Sidebar and Edit toolbar
Curated Electrical Grid Maps (Click Me)

đŸ—ș Curated Grid Maps

🔗 View on GitHub

A curated list of resources in the field of electrical grid mapping to improve global open data coverage, harmonization and quality for a sustainable energy transition.

Global Grid Mapping

⚠ If you're eager to get started with transmission grid mapping in OpenStreetMap, check out the Starter Kit Tutorial and our community discord channel of #MapYourGrid. Please note that the maps shown here are used to estimate the coverage in OpenStreetMap and to find missing lines. Do not copy/paste data from these maps directly into your OpenStreetMap layer. Each data point of the transmission network must be set manually and verified with official satellite data provided by the OpenStreetMap community. ⚠

If a link is broken, or you find a map with a broken link that you would like to add to this list, just try the link at the Internet Archive. This even works for PDFs and other files.

Grid Explorer and National Datasets

Global Data Catalogs

Africa

Asia

Australia and New Zealand

Europe

North America (Canada+USA)

Central America (including Mexico)

South America

Scientific Publications

Policy

Reports and News

Presentation and Videos

Grid Extraction, Transformation and Integration Tools

  • PyPSA Grid Analysis - Compares the PyPSA-Eur transmission grid database as well as the PyPSA-Earth transmission grid database for a selected region of 50 Hertz in Germany.
  • earth-osm - Provides a Python API and a CLI interface to extract data for various infrastructure types, such as power lines, substations, and more.
  • powerplantmatching - Set of tools to combine multiple power plant databases.

Remote Mapping

Poles-on-Earth

  • Poles-on-Earth - Poles on Earth is an AI web service that provides the positions of utility poles everywhere on Earth using satellite imagery

RetinaNet

SAR

ml-hv-grid

GridFinder

TTPLA

PGRID

A Dataset for Multi-Size Power Line Assets Detection in High-Resolution UAV Images

GridTracer

Substation detection

Embeddings and GIS Foundation Models

Crowdsourced Mapping

Communities and Initiatives

Challenges

Tutorials and Training

Mapping Coordinating

News and Community Reach

Electrical Grid Mapping in OpenStreetMap

Forums and Community

Power Tags and Articles

Good Practices in Power Routing

Statistics

Quality Assurance Tools

Desktop Editors and Mapping Tools

Mobile and In-field Editors

Diaries and Blogs

Data Import

Grid Design Basics

Theory

Grid Design

Voltage Estimation

Mapping Guidelines

The following list provides the main good practices for mapping different power infrastructure in OpenStreetMap:

Local Projects and Code of Mappers

Before you start mapping, please find out about the mapping restrictions in the respective country. In some countries, the mapping of transmission lines is not permitted. Get in touch with local users by finding out about local projects. If you can't find a local community, please send us an email and we will help you set up a local group.

By following our Code of Mappers, we collectively protect the integrity of the OpenStreetMap platform, foster trust with communities, and unlock the power of open data for a more resilient and just energy future. Please do NOT copy any data from hint layer directly into your OpenStreetMap data layer. Every data point in your OpenStreetMap data layer must be manually set and verified. The metadata must also be verified against compatible licensed sources or by people on the ground. If you cannot verify the data using satellite images or any other compatible source, please do not add this information from hint layers. This may seem like a high burden at first, but it ensures the high quality of OpenStreetMap.

Risk of Double Mapping

Please bear in mind that you have only downloaded transmission grid data for the country, state or province that you selected. This includes power plants, generators, substations, power towers and transmission lines. Other OpenStreetMap objects, such as streets, will not be visible. Therefore, never use our tools to map objects other than those loaded via Overpass, as otherwise other mappers will have to clean up the duplicate data.

Some cross-border transmission lines will still be visible beyond the pink administrative boundaries. However, to edit these, you will need to load both countries. Never map beyond the pink administrative boundaries, as this will most likely result in infrastructure being mapped twice.

Join the Chat

We welcome everyone to join our 📍-MapYourGrid discord channel. Here you can ask questions, and interact with the community. For mapping specific questions and to participate in our free personalized training, please join our 📍-MapYourGrid-support-and-training channel. We share this server with PyPSA-Earth, a global, open-source energy system model thats uses mainly OpenStreetMap's transmission grid data.

Join the Community 📆

We welcome everyone to join our community calls and tutorials, to learn more about the mapping process and the initiative.