Open Infrastructure Map

[efskap]

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.

[lnsru]

It’s really interesting how perception of openness changes over time. During cold war publishing this information would send one directly to gulag.

[einpoklum]

Me too. I particularly recommend looking at the wind farms East of the UK and North of the Northern coast of Europe, and their connections back to land by power lines. Not something you think about when you imagine those seas looking at a regular map.

https://openinframap.org/#5.48/54.077/2.676

[iszomer]

Right? I didn't know there was a 130 MW (diesel) power plant on an island connected and off the coast of Taiwan.

[arjvik]

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?

[333c]

More info on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection

> The Texas Interconnection is maintained as a separate grid for political, rather than technical reasons

[bob1029]

Texas is actually on ~4 different grids. I live north of Houston and I'm on MISO.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/ERCOT-geographic-footpri...

[DataJunkie]

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.

[itsamario]

Yep and its why some of us look for careers that let us work in rarely seen places, and devices most dont know exist, but are imperative to modern society.

[Flere-Imsaho]

Shout out to the UK for the number of off-shore wind turbine farms:

https://openinframap.org/#7.17/52.529/1.681

[rdiddly]

Makes sense. If you're an island surrounded by water, you don't have to go through the hassle of finding a piece of land to put them on.

[ascari]

Except that the UK has one of the most expensive electricity prices in the world

[croemer]

One can nicely see the bridge across the river that was burned in the recent attack in Berlin. https://openinframap.org/#15.16/52.425587/13.307235

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

[luplex]

I immediately went and looked for it too!

I also tried to see any vulnerable sabotage spots that would put my electricity out, but that seems harder.

[cowteriyaki]

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?

[aembleton]

I know there's one in Bruges, which is mapped on here: https://openinframap.org/#13.22/51.21001/3.22418/A,B,I,L

[yorwba]

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.

[matkoniecz]

I suspect that it is more about being a cool fact than being common.

[ChrisArchitect]

Some previous discussion:

2024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39109185

2022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29948473

[krzyk]

Also interesing one can find places like https://openinframap.org/#18.27/49.995951/18.966733 where 220kV line is just above a house.

I wonder how easy it would be to prepare a query in osm to find all such cases.

[wagwang]

Gigachad french nuclear versus virgin german coal in map form.

[kelseydh]

The map for Australia is interesting. Is this missing data? See no infrastructure for Alice Springs in the interior of Australia.

[defrost]

Missing data and incomplete layers I'd say.

I know the areas from Alice west to the coast and north to the equator fairly well.

Rail lines are missing, it appears to be just "big" power lines and that's 'accurate' in the sense that South Australia doesn't share power across the Nuallabor to Western Australia and many northern towns are 'independant' of any state or territory grid, running on a local generation basis.

Doesn't show Pine Gap or the Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt base either . . . :-)

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Gap

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Communication_Station_Ha...

(Ground to space and Ground to underwater communications)

[matkoniecz]

It is possible and likely that some data was not yet mapped in OpenStreetMap. 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)

[el_duderino]

Yeah, I see some data in my city where a plant was closed and demolished 4 years ago and is still listed on there.

[dhx]

Australia is miniscule by global standards and Alice Springs is miniscule by Australian standards. Alice Springs isn't connected to the grid servicing most of Australia's population crammed up along the East coast and doesn't have much in the way of heavy industrial users nearby. The difficulty for OSM mappers is the low-capacity above-ground power lines in Alice Springs have no more pixels as the trunk of any 20 year old tree so at satellite imagery resolutions of >30cm you may need to find an image taken at sunrise or sunset where the long shadow of a pole is visible on the ground. I also think it is preferred in remote locations such as Alice Springs to run lines underground (particularly along roads) due to decreased total cost of ownership of not having to worry about bushfire and flood damage to infrastructure.

The ACT government provides ~10cm aerial imagery of Canberra and surrounds a few times a year and from this imagery, unless a minor power pole is obscured by trees or a building, it is generally easy to identify most poles. Evoenergy (distribution operator for the ACT) also publicly provide detailed maps of poles and lines no matter how minor they are. The reason this detail won't be mapped in OSM is lack of interest and availability of mappers to micro-map every minor power pole from aerial imagery, and OSM's very conservative approach to importing datasets, particularly from a licensing perspective (e.g. attempting to apply European database directive concerns in countries like Australia which don't have equivalent laws, and even have opposing case law precedents).

Australia is one of the most open countries when it comes to supplying electrical grid data. Even underground conduit locations are available publicly for most distributors, as well as designed summer/winter constraints for each transmission line (e.g. maximum kA per line). See [1] for some links to maps and other data that is made publicly available.

[1] https://query.wikidata.org/#SELECT%20%3Foperator%20%3Foperat...

[paganel]

Excellent link, thank you for posting!

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.

[a1371]

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

[pbmonster]

Yeah, ultra high voltage DC power lines have something like 3.5% loss per 1000km. American sun belt to European sun belt is at least 6000km, so you just gotta eat the 20% loss. Same ballpark as pumped hydro storage.

6000km sounds like a lot, but the Chinese have built a 3000km UHVDC line delivering 12 GW, and putting down submarine communications cables this long is complete routine today. Would be interesting how much aluminium/lead/copper such a project would take. EDIT: found a supplier that specifies a 1GW cable at 7000 tons per spool. A spool is 130km of cable, so that's 350 000 tons of cable per GW for the transatlantic link. So just the raw aluminium is around a billion dollars per GW.

Anyway, first we have to properly connect those two sun belts to the rest of their own continental masses with UHVDC, then we have a lot of political problems to solve, and then we can check battery prices...

[mltvc]

the Nato-L project [1] trying to get this done between Europe and North-America. 2 of the founders are the guys behind the (very interesting) redefining-energy podcast [2].

[1]: https://nato-l.com/ [2]: https://redefining-energy.com/

[ankraft]

For the Netherlands (and surrounding countries), there is Hoogspanningsnet (the high-voltage grid), which is maintained by infrastructure enthusiasts: https://webkaart.hoogspanningsnet.com/

[ece]

Telecom just seems to show data centers? Was hoping to see where cable/fiber lines.

[beaugunderson]

ahh cool, that layer was hidden by default... and now I see all the data centers I mapped in OSM show up!

[raggles]

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.

[dhx]

If you want more up-to-date/accurate data on NZ transmission infrastructure there is also the following "Point" geometry tagged per OSM conventions:

[1] Transpower pylons: https://alltheplaces-data.openaddresses.io/map.html?show=htt...

[2] Transpower substations: https://alltheplaces-data.openaddresses.io/map.html?show=htt...

The public source of this data (ArcGIS Feature Server account of Transpower) shows data last modified by Transpower in October 2025 for pylons and February 2025 for substations. At the rate of development of NZ, you wouldn't expect major changes to any of this data unless it's a major transmission upgrade project identified years in advance in hundreds of public announcements and documents.

For distribution, the largest distributor in NZ (Vector) provides "Line" geometry at https://www.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?url=https:/... (note: not included in AllThePlaces due to ATP not currently collecting geometry other than points)

[aembleton]

You can update the data in Open Street Map. Theres a lot of incorrect data in there, but it can only be as good as the data thats been entered.

[apexalpha]

This is really cool. I had no idea my city had two underground 50kV cables to distribute the power.

From what I can see it's pretty complete and up to date for my area.

[shautvast]

It lists 'Centrale Hemweg' (Amsterdam). This plant was decommissioned 6 years ago. How up to date is this data?

[agwa]

It gets its data from Open Street Map, so it's only up-to-date if volunteers are keeping it up-to-date.

That said, https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrale_Hemweg says the plant was converted to natural gas, not decommissioned, in 2019, and this is correctly reflected in Open Street Map / Open Infra Map. Do you have a citation that contradicts this?

[Beijinger]

It is a great tool for terrorist attacks: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgrpzn6gz4o

[iamnothere]

So is Wikipedia, the internet in general, the library, Home Depot, a rental vehicle, or a basic working knowledge of chemistry. What’s the point in stating the obvious?

[orthecreedence]

I'm pretty sure ICE has access to all this information already.

[maelito]

It seems to me that past civilisations on earth were more evolved given their railway infrastructure. Incredible.

[farg24]

Nothing in Alaska?

[matkoniecz]

likely it was not yet mapped in OpenStreetMap!

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)

[7e]

Is this a guide for Russian saboteurs?

[iamnothere]

No, it’s a map of infrastructure.

[roschdal]

This is a bad idea in terms of security in war

[aquafox]

Or a good one, forcing governments to have robust infrastructure that this info isn't useful. Similar reasoning as with security and open source software.

[jcims]

Most of this physical infrastructure is trivially identifiable in Google Maps.

[matkoniecz]

someone having ability to precisely target other country likely would not be stopped much by need to find power plants themselves

while 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

[Towaway69]

Berlin, Germany just had a blackout because a left from centre organisation decided to set an electric exchange on fire. Right over new years and at a very cold time of year.

Apparently the data on where the exchange was and how it would affect the surrounding neighbourhoods was openly available. The neighbourhoods affect were largely affluent.

It’s probably also the reason why this is being reshared.