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power

Description: For marking and tagging facilities for the generation and distribution of electrical power. Google definition User discussion

Group: Man made

Element: help

Implies:

Tagwatch: help Europe France Germany Italy Netherlands Spain Turkey Great-Britain

Summary

Applying to Map Features type: Physical.
For marking and tagging facilities for the generation and distribution of electrical power.

Rendering

Mapnik	Osmarender

Core values

Key	Value	Element	Comment	Rendering	Photo
power	tower		For towers or pylons carrying high voltage electricity cables. Normally constructed from steel latticework. Should not be used for electricity or telephone cables carried on single wooden poles.
power	line		A way following the path of power cables.
power	station		A tag for electricity stations. Wires from power lines come in or go out here.
power	sub_station		A tag for electricity sub-stations. Smaller than a station. Could be a box near street.
power	generator		A place where power is generated. Use in combination with power_source
power	User Defined		see Tagwatch site for some other common used values as well
wires	*		Number of wires per power cable. "single" (1), "double" (2), "triple" (3) or "quad" (4)

This table is a wiki template with a default description in English. Editable here.

Notes

Very useful for navigation. Some pylons are accessible and can be marked, but I imagine the main method of data collection would be using bearings.

It might be worth specifying that this only gets used for the large power lines (x00,000 volts strung from latticework pylons) - if we were to mark the 800 V insulated cables between telegraph poles, it might confuse people looking for a much larger structure)

National Grid call the things "towers" as they're free-standing, but common usage seems to be "pylon"

In the UK, each power line appears to have a two character identifier and each tower along that line appears to be numbered. For example ZM is the West Weybridge to Chessington line, and each tower is numbered ZM 1, ZM 2, etc. I propose that these be recorded, if known, for each tower with the ref tag. For example: power=tower, ref=ZM 35.

Note on identifying power lines:

In the UK there is a hierarchy of power lines that is easy to identify. Most are identifiable over long distances which makes them useful for navigation. Other countries follow very similar schemes (not surprising as the design is constrained by the same physics and economics). Starting at the low-voltage end, we have:

• Wooden poles carrying four wires on small ceramic insulators, or bundles of insulated cables twisted together. These lines are usually 400 V between phases, which directly provide the domestic 230 V supply. Most of these follow roads and paths.
• Wooden poles with two or three widely-spaced bare wires on large insulators having one or two plates. These lines are 11,000 volts - often used for distribution in rural areas.
• Wooden poles with three bare wires on multi-plate insulators are 45,000 V between phases - usually on higher and more substantial poles, sometimes poles are used in pairs.
• Metal towers carrying a set of single wires (usually three plus an earth wire on top) are 132,000 V. These are gradually disappearing.
• Towers with three or six double wires are 275,000 V
• Towers with three or six quadruple wires are 475,000 V

All towers also have a single earth wire strung from the top. O.S. maps distinguish between power lines on poles and those on towers. We could go further with identifying characteristics, and I would suggest at least tagging the number of wires in each group, e.g. wires=single wires=double wires=quad - these would apply only to the 'towers' type of line. -- Andrew Findlay 10:08, 6 November 2006 (UTC) (updated 13th Nov 2006)