[Tagging] What's a power=station?

[Alan Mintz]

At 2010-01-17 19:33, Steve Bennett wrote:
>According to the wiki "map features" table, a "power=station" is "A
>tag for electricity stations. Wires from power lines come in or go out
>here."
>
>Two questions:
>1) Does everyone use it this way? Without having looked at the table,
>I would have guessed that a "power=station" was a power plant (ie, a
>coal, or gas or whatever plant that generates power), whereas that
>appears to be a "power=generator".
>2) What is a "power station" exactly? I think I know the type of thing
>it's referring to (although I have, perhaps mistakenly, called these
>"sub stations" in the past). What does it do? Does it simply convert
>high voltage down to lower, consumer-level voltage?

This is another one of those areas where OSM terminology differs from that 
used in the US, or maybe is just plain wrong. The utility companies that 
own the typical ~1 acre step-down/switching complex, fed by "high-voltage" 
lines (>100 kV), do indeed call them sub-stations. I have adhered to the 
wiki, though, in tagging them as power=station.

I use substation for the occasional, smaller, usually single-user complex 
with just a few transformers, fed by lower voltage lines (usually 12-60 kV 
in the US I think).

Unless people have largely ignored the wiki in practice, I'd suggest 
leaving it as is, in lieu of having to globally analyze and fix existing tags.

--
Alan Mintz <Alan_Mintz+OSM at Earthlink.net>