Global Power Lines

Power transmission & distribution lines from OpenStreetMap, organized country-by-country as ready-to-use GeoJSON.

Why this exists

Clean, free, country-level extracts of power line data — pull what you need into Mapbox, QGIS, or any mapping project without querying OSM yourself.

Data source

All data is from OpenStreetMap via the Overpass API. Tags pulled:

• power=line — high-voltage transmission lines
• power=minor_line — distribution lines
• power=cable — underground/submarine cables (optional)

Each feature includes voltage, operator, cables, frequency, and name where tagged.

Usage

Fetch a country

python scripts/fetch_overpass.py --country US

Output lands in geojson/<COUNTRY>/power_lines_<country>.geojson.

Fetch a custom area

python scripts/fetch_overpass.py --bbox "-125,24,-66,49"

Available countries

Country	Features	Size
NL	~16k	~7 MB
GB	~224k	~114 MB

More added regularly. Run python scripts/fetch_overpass.py --country XX to generate any of 27+ supported countries.

Using with Mapbox

map.addSource('power-lines', {
  type: 'geojson',
  data: 'geojson/GB/power_lines_gb.geojson'
});

map.addLayer({
  id: 'power-lines',
  type: 'line',
  source: 'power-lines',
  paint: {
    'line-color': '#ff6b35',
    'line-width': 1,
    'line-opacity': 0.8
  }
});

For large datasets (100k+ features), upload to Mapbox Tilesets instead of loading GeoJSON directly in the browser.

License

Data is © OpenStreetMap contributors, licensed under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL).

Scripts are MIT licensed.