GRID · TRANSMISSION
The High-Voltage Backbone
A power plant is no use without wires to carry what it makes. This is the grid’s long-distance skeleton: 58,278 high-voltage corridors at 300kV and above — the lines that move electricity across countries and continents, from the plants to the cities that draw it. They run brighter and heavier here the higher the voltage, from the 300 kV regional grid up through the 500 kV networks to the 765–1,100 kV ultra-high-voltage super-grids that span China, India and beyond.
Reading the voltages
Higher voltage carries more power with less loss over long distances, so the biggest, longest lines run at the highest voltages. The backbone splits into four bands — the same colours and weights the live map uses, drawn brighter and thicker as the voltage climbs.
Where the backbone is densest
A feel for where the mapped backbone runs thickest. These counts follow OpenStreetMap’s coverage as much as the grid itself — densest across the US, Europe and China — so read them as a guide to what’s mapped, not a definitive league table.
About this data
Every line comes from OpenStreetMap (power=line, via the Overpass API, ODbL). OSM holds around 2.7 million power lines worldwide — far more than a single map can carry or a browser can render — so this shows the high-voltage backbone at 300kV and above: the long-distance grid that reads at planetary scale. OSM’s many split segments are merged into 58,278continuous corridors and graded by voltage, the one field that’s reliably tagged at this level (the two lines carrying impossible voltage tags are shown by band only, never with a made-up number). Coverage follows where OSM mapping is densest — richest across the US and Europe — so this is a map of the mappedbackbone, not a complete census. The major substations — the nodes where these lines meet — are a layer of their own; the lower-voltage distribution grid isn’t included. Snapshot taken 2026-06-24.