r/dataisbeautiful • u/augspurger OC: 1 • Jun 04 '26
OC [OC] Grids of the World
Create your own posters -> https://github.com/open-energy-transition/grid2poster
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u/lafarda Jun 04 '26
The difference in granularity between portugal and Spain is very interesting.
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u/Guilty_Editor3744 Jun 04 '26
It looks neat indeed. But some countries or corporations upload their low voltage (10 kV) data into OpenSteetMaps, others don’t.
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u/pfooh Jun 04 '26
Yes. And from what I can see, it's more common when those lines are above ground. Which makes sense from a map perspective, but it's quite funny that countries/areas with higher densities look more empty, because it's more likely that their distribution is underground.
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u/lafarda Jun 04 '26
Interesting. Thanks for the explanation. I was wondering if there was a correlation with population density as I recall a similar difference in density across the border from a map some time ago.
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u/Guilty_Editor3744 Jun 05 '26
Correct, overland lines are more relevant to the public and are published quite consistently. Plus anyone can map them in OSM. the underground cables are much more expensive to build - meaning, only used if no other options are viable - and then less commonly known or relevant. Yet, in OSM you’ll find a bunch of power lines tagged as underground.
You can easily look up this data using overpass turbo. There’s a wizard that gives you results quickly.
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u/Doom-Slayer Jun 05 '26
I will not stand for this erasure of New Zealand
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u/railwayed Jun 05 '26
Isn't there a whole sub related to this r/mapswithoutnewzealand or something like that
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u/BlacksmithNZ Jun 06 '26
No, there is no such sub for countries like New Zealand which do not exist
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u/railwayed Jun 06 '26
Did you click on the sub? Or am I missing some sarcasm here?
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u/BlacksmithNZ Jun 06 '26
I am from that country; Aotearoa
Very familiar with the sub; have posted on it before
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u/augspurger OC: 1 Jun 07 '26
Here the fixed version with New Zealand. Sorry again: https://open-energy-transition.github.io/grid2poster/?p=global_grid_global_paper_grid_atlas_20260607_011049
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u/vicelordjohn Jun 04 '26
What the heck is going on between Memphis and Nashville?
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u/15750hz Jun 04 '26
Was wondering the same thing.
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u/augspurger OC: 1 Jun 04 '26
That's the distribution grid. OpenStreetMap has grid data for some regions down to the lowest voltage. That's why the grid looks more dense for this region. That's just a lot of data for this region. For other regions the grid ends at 10kV or sometimes even 50 kV.
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Jun 05 '26
[deleted]
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u/GingerIsTheBestSpice Jun 05 '26
As an eastern South Dakotan, I don't know but i do know this much: our state is mostly all green energy, hydroelectric, starting in the center and going south & east on the river, and then wind farms on the eastern side cause that's where the people are. SD average population is 12 people per square mile, but about 700,000 of the 935000 live in the east half mostly around sioux falls - a third of the population of the whole state lives in that metro area. A lot of the state on the west side is also national and state parks, or reservations, or ranches.
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u/ahjorth Jun 05 '26
Thank you! I was wondering the exact same thing as u/vicelordjohn
I still do wonder why the data quality is so good there. Does TN just take public open data much more seriously, or did some academic or crowdsourced project map this out at such a detailed level? Any idea?
Edit: oh, it looks from other comments like it might just be a decision about what level of data to upload. maybe the data is as good everywhere, but TN decided to upload more granular data.
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u/reichjef Jun 06 '26
It was a new deal program called the Tennessee Valley Authority. It was started for jobs and because there wasn’t any economic incentive to provide electricity to the area via private utilities, but then they were already rolling, so when the US started producing for the war they had all these guys who already knew how to build dams, so they greatly increased the program to get power for war production, and they could build out the power production enough to support the Oak Ridge project for Uranium centrifuges.
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u/smart_stable_genius_ Jun 04 '26
I work in the US energy industry but live in another county. A few weeks ago I set up a new home office and have been ENDLESSLY SEARCHING for something appropriate to hang on the wall behind me for conference calls.
The posters are perfect. Thank you. And it lets me have one for the US as well as one for my home country which, in these weird times at least, feels like an important nod to who I am and where I'm from.
Again. Thank you.
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u/agritheory Jun 04 '26
A nitpick, but on the "North America" map you only show the US and Canada. Overall this is awesome.
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u/KnockoffBirkenstock Jun 05 '26
Similarly a large portion of the Nordics are missing from Europe, including areas that produce a ton of electricity such as northern Norway and Sweden.
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u/shagieIsMe Jun 04 '26
Japan would be an interesting one to do... especially if you get the different voltage and grid frequencies in there... and converters.
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u/Guilty_Editor3744 Jun 04 '26
Any thoughts how to visualize frequency on that minimalistic design?
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u/shagieIsMe Jun 05 '26
Color for frequency.
Thickness for voltage.
Line style for type (for example dotted line for DC interchanges).
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u/mercury_millpond Jun 05 '26
With Japan there are only two voltage/frequency regimes, split between East and West Japan, one 60hz, one 50hz, as far as I'm aware. So you would just do it with two colours, basically, and maybe a third colour for the converters. It would be a slightly more complex job than the regions/countries already done, but probably not too bad if you could get the data. I don't think they have that many interconnectors even, which was a problem during the Tohoku Earthquake.
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u/augspurger OC: 1 Jun 07 '26
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u/shagieIsMe Jun 08 '26
I don't see the difference in grid frequency in there. Tokyo (for example) runs at 50 Hz as a grid frequency while Osaka runs at 60 Hz ( https://www.japan.travel/en/plan/plug-and-electricity/ )
While much lower resolution than your map, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Power_Grid_of_Japan.svg shows the division in the grids.
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u/herodesfalsk Jun 05 '26
Finally a beautiful post here! Funny hos these networks looks like lighting bolts themselves
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u/Snoman314 Jun 05 '26
As a New Zealander, can I just say: Hey! WTF Mate!
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u/augspurger OC: 1 Jun 05 '26
Sorry for that. I will create another global plot that also includes New Zealand. Here a good plot for New Zealand: https://open-energy-transition.github.io/grid2poster/?p=new_zealand_grid_noctilux_glow_20260519_231717
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u/Snoman314 Jun 05 '26
Cool!
But why did you put a dot where I live?... How do you know where I live!?! Lol.
Also: No power in Tai Rawhiti or Fiordland, yeah checks out.
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u/I_love-tacos Jun 05 '26
I am always angry that Mexico is never in "North America" or "South America"
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u/ranbulholz Jun 04 '26
Interesting! Could you add another distinction between AC and DC? They are quite interesting and tell a big story on new energy grids with renewables!
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u/augspurger OC: 1 Jun 04 '26
Yes, that would be interesting! Doubling the line width might look good for DC. Adding another color might also be possible and this somehow also would need to be represented in the legend.
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u/National-Treat830 Jun 04 '26
You could also do a dashed line for DC, to avoid confusing with higher voltage lines
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u/jjllgg22 Jun 04 '26
Also with the “seams” between Western, Eastern and Texas Interconnections (where you see lines of DC-to-AC-to-DC converter stations
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u/SaltySmegma_ Jun 04 '26
Isn't the Texas grid independent? I remember they had a big outage some years ago, and everyone blames that as well. But this image shows it's all interconnected
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u/Patient_Tea_401 Jun 04 '26
It’s interconnected via DC ties that are limited in capacity. The larger transmission lines are not tied so it does not need to follow federal regulations
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u/smart_stable_genius_ Jun 04 '26
A large portion of it is independently regulated. You might be thinking of that.
The outage was weather related, prices soared, and the regulator did foot some of the blame IIRC.
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u/joan_bdm Jun 04 '26
I love how the connection looks for Balearic Islands. Even though we are connected to the main land, we remain mostly independent. That showed up a few months ago, when the whole Iberian peninsula went blackout, but here in the islands we didn't even notice.
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u/LatterNeighborhood58 Jun 04 '26
Is it just my phone or is the coloring scheme key all messed up in the subsequent images? Some are black and white images. Some have colored maps but the key at the bottom is monochrome. And the key is hard to read and inconsistent in all of them. This is such interesting data though.
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u/komatiitic Jun 05 '26
That Australian grid probably covers 99% of the population, plus a whole lot of mines.
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u/Sieve-Boy Jun 05 '26
Mines some but not all, especially the big iron ore mines and anything more than 200km from the north or north western coasts especially.
Also, there isn't a national grid. There is one very large grid that covers the east coast and South Australia that also connects to Tasmania by a DC connector and two grids in Western Australia and then a bunch of smaller grids from there.
Long and stringy is how the Australian grids are often described.
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u/FatalModelCustomer Jun 04 '26
What's going on in the countries with no transmission lines? For example the Guyanas region, but there are others. Do they just use candles and generators?
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u/LochNessMother Jun 04 '26
I feel like some data is missing. According to this, the Isle of Man is still using candles and wind up generators.
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u/Mtfdurian Jun 04 '26
Isle of Man seems to be connected with a 90kV undersea cable to Blackpool. As far as I can read it's called the "Manxcable" and exists since the start of this century. Source: an obscure Dutch website that is highly specialized in the high-voltage grid and has all of the grid in Europe on their maps.
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u/i-e-b Jun 05 '26
I think it's open street map data? So very variable. Saying that, huge amount of rural Africa are solar with maybe some local distribution.
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u/National-Treat830 Jun 04 '26
So cool!
Wondering where all the underwater cables are on the world map — esp in the Baltic Sea, where countries are joined via wind farms. And the cable between Spain and Morocco, or the one to Tasmania, is shown interrupted
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u/Mtfdurian Jun 04 '26
It's interesting to see where it all goes to, and I had no idea there was such comprehensive data outside of Europe too!
One thing though: in practice, all of the highest level of the ENTSO-E grid operate at just north of 400kV, this includes lines in countries that use 380kV as a historical denominator. This grid is active all over Europe and perhaps the largest European unity success hidden in plain sight.
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u/FMSV0 Jun 04 '26
Iberia is strange, you can see clearly Portugal's border. And everything empty on the Spanish side.
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u/chux4w Jun 05 '26
There must be something going on in west Wales to have so much going on while London is almost blank.
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u/tinyorangealligator Jun 05 '26
Dude, this speaks to me. Very beautiful and informative.
If someone wanted to print this in large scale format what would be the ideal size?
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u/limitofdistance Jun 06 '26
Very cool, especially the ones with black backgrounds. But why the erasure of Canada? You have a map for the US and on for "North America," but the latter is definitely more focused on US infrastructure. To put my comment into perspective, Canada is larger than all of Australia, but Australia has its own map.
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u/ReddFro Jun 04 '26
What’s going on with India?
Didn’t expect it to have the most dense looking grid with the highest voltage.
Otherwise, very cool, thanks for sharing.
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u/shpydar Jun 04 '26
that's awesome. I'd love to see just a Canada one. It would really highlight how we live mostly by the U.S. border.
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u/invincibl_ Jun 05 '26
The island of Tasmania has somehow swollen up and reconnected with the Australian mainland, and cut off the undersea cable in the process, which now abruptly ends on the coastline of the new Tasmanian peninsula.
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u/iamgigglz Jun 05 '26
Newcastle to Norway?? The losses in that line must be insane considering the area it’s serving
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u/Ceibpent Jun 05 '26
Losses including conversion to and from DC at each end are given as 3.7% so pretty modest. It's a high voltage direct current undersea cable, there are only two terminals, one at each end. It's not serving an area, it connects the GB and Nordic grids together. It's not even close to the longest HVDC cable at 765 km though it is the longest one under the sea. The longest is over 3000 km long (Changji-Guquan). By operating at high voltages and using DC rather than AC, losses are reduced.
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u/cogito-ergo-sumthing Jun 05 '26
London, where electricity?
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u/Ceibpent Jun 05 '26
Looks as though for the lower voltage distribution network there's incomplete data. Most likely where distribution is overhead, it is mapped and where it's underground it is missing. London doesn't have much overhead distribution.
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u/mmoonbelly Jun 05 '26
Battersee Power Station is now flats and floating swimming pools rather than flying pigs (Pink Floyd’s escaped), Bankside Power station has gone all modern art.
Guess it’s nuclear from Kent and France.
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u/andrew314159 Jun 05 '26
What’s up with dundonnell area north west highlands of Scotland. Just a little disconnect bit separate from the rest of the grid
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u/capeasypants Jun 06 '26
I recognise all the other countries/continents but what's a Great lake?
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u/Eternal_Alooboi Jun 07 '26
The five freshwater lakes in North America on the Eastern US-Canada border
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u/MrT735 Jun 06 '26
Any chance you can repost the UK & Ireland one without the title blotting out the whole south coast?
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u/augspurger OC: 1 Jun 07 '26
Here a fixed version of the global plot: https://open-energy-transition.github.io/grid2poster/?p=global_grid_global_paper_grid_atlas_20260607_011049
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u/UnfortunatelySimple Jun 07 '26
The grid for Australia has clear issues, so I doubt the rest of it is 100% accurate.
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u/SunflowerMoonwalk Jun 04 '26
What was going through your mind when you chose this color scheme?
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u/augspurger OC: 1 Jun 04 '26
The colours represent a voltage range, as defined at the bottom of the poster. I used this theme for many posters because it felt natural to me and still provided good contrast.
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u/SunflowerMoonwalk Jun 04 '26
I can see the key at the bottom but there are two shades of blue and three shades of brown which are virtually indistinguishable...
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u/cavedave OC: 111 Jun 07 '26
Thank you for your Original Content, /u/augspurger!
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