Tag:power=station

From OpenStreetMap Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Public-images-osm logo.svg power = station
Commons-emblem-hand.svg
Description
Using this tag is discouraged, use power=substation for substations, power=plant for power plants (power stations) or power=generator for power generating equipment instead. Edit this description in the wiki page. Edit this description in the data item.
Group: power
Used on these elements
should not be used on nodesshould not be used on waysshould not be used on areasshould not be used on relations (except multipolygon relations)
Useful combination
Status: deprecatedPage for proposal

exclamation mark

This feature has been labeled as deprecated. The recommended replacement is: power=substation for substations, power=plant for power plants (power stations) or power=generator for power generating equipment.
The reason is documented in Deprecated features. You are still free to continue to use or interpret this tag as you see fit since OpenStreetMap does not have “banned features”.
Under no circumstances should you (semi-)automatically change “deprecated” tags to something else in the database on a large scale without conforming to the automated edits code of conduct. Any such change will be reverted.

Former use

This tag was used as shorthand tagging for electrical distribution substations, which are facilities that perform voltage conversion and switching as part of an electrical transmission or distribution network. Since January 2008, power distribution and conversion facilities should be tagged as power=substation instead, because this is less ambiguous.

Problematically for the database, the term "power station" is more usually associated with power generation facilities in the English language. For example, the Wikipedia article Power station begins "A power station (also referred to as a generating station, power plant, or powerhouse) is an industrial facility for the generation of electric energy". See the talk page here for a fuller discussion, but in practice this linguistic ambiguity is already known to have caused data errors. Since June 2013, power generation facilities should be mapped using the power=plant or power=generator tags.

Important note on retagging

If you start retagging features now tagged as power=station please follow these guidelines :

  • Don't perform any mass retagging. Each instance must be inspected individually (e.g. from survey or aerial imagery) before being retagged.
  • Check whether it is a substation or a power plant (power=plant). A significant number of features currently tagged as 'station' are actually power plants (places / sites) or generators (devices inside a power plant).
  • It's strongly encouraged to add voltage=* and substation=* tags to power=substation objects. The voltage tag should include at least the highest voltage used in the substation.

If you don't know the voltage(s) used or the substation type then you may use fixme=voltage to inform knowledgeable contributors about the lack of information.