OpenGeofiction
Recently I have been trying to expand and detail power generation and transmission infrastructure (as well as some industrial areas).
I am not from an area with many power lines, and I am not very familiar with the best practices for how to set them up: i.e what Voltages to use and where, how many circuits, lines, where do I put substations, what is the typical land density of power lines, what do maintenance facilities look like, etc.
I have started in a few places like: https://opengeofiction.net/edit#map=14/-40.3279/160.4383 https://opengeofiction.net/#map=15/-39.8130/159.9072 https://opengeofiction.net/#map=15/-39.9406/159.7498
But if anyone has any expertise or resources regarding power infrastructure, it would be greatly appreciated, as well as any feedback on the little bits I have mapped thus far.
Discussion
Comment from Sarepava on 26 August 2020 at 10:00
It depends on the kind of infrastructure you intend your country to have. Some RW countries put their power lines underground (France) so you only see some towers and shorter cables to reach buildings. Others (UK) use a lot of large overhead cables mixed with underground in urban areas. Based solely on where I live, I see long lines of high transmission towers marching across the country, and substations in every neighbourhood.
This might be a bit of a ‘project’ but I’d start by estimating how much power generation your country/cities need and what type. For a typical European or North American country, that means a mixture of coal fired, oil fired, nuclear and renewable generation, although this can vary wildly (UK has recently phased out coal and has quite a bit of wind as does Denmark, Poland and Germany still burn a lot of it, France has a lot of nuclear, Switzerland a lot of hydroelectric, etc). There may be national or international political considerations that make for an interesting backstory here - how strong is the environmental movement, what natural resources does your country have, what are foreign relations like, does the government regard its power plants as a national prestige?
I wouldn’t worry too much about voltages as these may not show up on the OGF map.
Hope this helps a bit.